Fred Lee Crisman is another guy we need to know more about. If we could get to the bottom of who he was and who he was working for and for what purposes, many nagging questions of the last century might start coming into focus. I (like many others I hope) got interested in him from a reading of Joan Mellen’s book A Farewell to Justice.

Below is a bare-bones biographical sketch of Crisman that I posted, along with a lot of other information, on the JFK Research Forum (www.jfkresearch.com) last year. Also attached is a time-line that contains many more details.

Ron Williams

++++++++++

Biographical Sketch of Fred Lee Crisman

Fred Lee Crisman, the son of Fred L. Crisman and Eva Louise Joshlin, was born July 22, 1919, in Tacoma, Washington. He moved with his family to Vale, Oregon, in 1933 where his father was the proprietor of a hotel. He graduated from Vale Union High School in 1939 and attended Eastern Oregon College in LaGrande, Oregon, for a short time during the 1939-1940 school year before leaving to go to work for the Union Pacific Railroad as a brakeman. He was with the railroad until joining the military in 1942.

Crisman married Filomena Veristain in 1941. They had a son, Fred, Jr., and a daughter, Chris. His daughter was killed in a car accident in 1964.

He served in World War II and the Korean conflict as a fighter pilot, attaining the rank of Captain. Between the years of his service in the two wars he worked for the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs in Seattle in 1946 and 1947.

In 1947 he became well known as a protagonist, along with his friend and sometime business partner, Harold Dahl, in the famous Maury Island UFO incident near Tacoma, Washington. This was written about in the 1999 Kenn Thomas book, Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy.

He later was a teacher and school administrator in a number of high schools in Washington and Oregon, and he worked for the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle for two years in the early 1960s.

For years he was a freelance writer, especially writing books, speeches, and campaign materials for many political figures, including state governors and members of the U.S. Congress.

In the late 1960s he moved back to his native Tacoma, Washington, and became involved in a highly charged political struggle in which he and friends and colleagues sought to end the City-Management form of government. As part of this struggle Crisman became well known and controversial as the host of a radio talk show using the pseudonym “Jon Gold,” and he wrote a book about the period called Murder of a City…Tacoma that was published in 1970.

In November of 1968 he was subpoenaed by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, to appear before a grand jury that was part of the Garrison investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Early in 1975 he married Mary Frances Borden, whom he had met when he was a member of the Tacoma Library Board of Trustees. He had been appointed to the board in 1970 by the outgoing mayor of Tacoma, A.L. “Slim” Rasmussen, a compatriot in the local political wars.

Fred Lee Crisman died at the age of fifty-six of kidney failure in the Seattle Veterans Hospital on December 10, 1975.

David Guyatt

03-24-2009, 09:07 AM

Crisman is, indeed, a very interesting character. More background here:

http://greyfalcon.us/restored/Fred%20Crisman.ht

Fred Crisman

In the summer of 1968, when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested prominent city socialite Clay Shaw, he may or may not have been on the trail of the assassins he believed were responsible for killing John F. Kennedy. But what Garrison did undeniably get close to exposing were the identities and activities of intelligence agents who not only harbored a deep hatred of Kennedy, but were willing participants in one of the government's more shameful episodes.

Had these men been exposed, Garrison would have unsealed the Pandora's Box on flying saucers, which, if it had occurred, would have forever ripped away the then nearly 20-year-old mythic fabric wrapping the UFO mystery--a veil since used to great benefit by the military to conceal the testing of classified aircraft.

As bizarre as it sounds, Kennedy's assassination and "flying saucers" share common ground.

*Project Paperclip

As the central figure in Garrison's conspiracy, Clay Shaw appears to have been involved in Project Paperclip, a top-secret intelligence operation that began in 1945 with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. It was a deeply covert program to bring Hitler's secret weapons and their designers to America. Among the aeroforms the Nazis had developed were strangely configured jet-propelled aircraft the likes of which had never been seen.

Then two years later, in late June, 1947, a number of aircraft that looked very similar to some that had been on the Nazi drawing boards were seen flying in and around Washington state, the location of several aerospace defense contractors which were benefiting from the secret Paperclip operation Shaw was a part of.

*Civilian sightings

Among the civilians who saw these aircraft was U.S. Deputy Marshall Kenneth Arnold, who watched a formation streak past in front of his plane while flying near Mt. Rainier on June 24.

The Maury Island sighting allegedly happened three days before Arnold's own rendezvous with destiny. The craft, initially reported by Harold Dahl, was said to have spewed "slag-like" material over a wide area. Crisman, a pivotal player in the ensuing investigation, was ostensibly an official of the Puget Sound Harbor Patrol and Dahl's supervisor.

Twenty years later, Garrison intimately linked Crisman to Clay Shaw. Government records indicate Crisman was much more than a lowly harbor patrol officer. Available evidence also suggests he knew a lot more about the aircraft Dahl saw than he admitted--aircraft some intelligence sources believe were hybrids of those designed early that decade by Nazi engineers who were brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip.

In 1967, when Garrison launched his investigation of Shaw-- whose intelligence background was not yet documented--Paperclip had been secret for nearly two decades. It continued to be a secret for the next six years. But even when it did begin to unravel in 1973, the government successfully continued to promote the lie that it was a short-lived operation limited to just a few post-war raids on Hitler's hoard of scientific talent. In 1985, the U.S. General Accounting Office--typically not an office known for apologizing for government wrongdoing and bungling--even claimed the operation ended in 1947.

*`T-Forces'

The Paperclip operation got underway even before American soldiers laid down their rifles. Attached to special military units called "T-Forces," scientific teams comprised of the Army, Navy, Army Air Force and intelligence agents from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) fanned out across Europe to capture and interrogate Hitler's brain trust, locate and microfilm documents and confiscate all useful equipment found in the Third Reich's factories and laboratories. (1)

T-Force teams secured Hitler's most secret aerospace technologies. Among the information that these teams captured were plans for fast, disc-shaped aircraft which the Nazis never got into full-scale production. (2)

Through Paperclip, America secured some top-notch scientific and research specialists, including many involved in Nazi atrocities. The most important of these ex-Nazis ran the Peenemünde Aerodynamics Institute, the installation where Hitler's V-2 rocket and jet aircraft were developed using forced slave labor from the concentration camp at Karlshagen. Peenemünde was a gold mine for the military and its contractors. Under the cloak of Paperclip, the Peenemünde scientists secretly controlled America's rocketry, aerospace and space programs for the next 20 years. (3)

*War crimes `papered over'

Peenemünde scientists serving U.S. interests--including Werner Von Braun and Kurt Debus, who were installed as the first directors of the Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center--had come a long way from being members of Hitler's elite SS. Their war crimes had been papered over and withheld from NASA officials.

Garrison, some suspect, came very close to compromising this and other secrets when he arrested Clay Shaw on charges of conspiracy to murder John Kennedy. But without hard evidence of Shaw's ties to the CIA (clearly established later), and having lost his star witness David Ferrie, who was found dead just before Shaw's trial, Garrison had little to take to court. Consequently, Shaw was acquitted. He died on Aug. 14, 1974--mysteriously, Garrison believed.

*Shaw's CIA background

Documents surfaced in 1977 showing that Shaw had worked for the CIA since 1949. (4) He had also been in business with former Nazis and European fascists involved in several CIA-supported covert operations throughout Europe, and there is strong evidence he had been a member of the OSS; he certainly had worked for a top OSS officer who was involved in Operation Paperclip.

But did Crisman know Shaw from those days? It's possible. Crisman is said to have been attached to the OSS. Intelligence sources say he was a member of a secret fraternity of former intelligence officials. Other sources swear he was involved in gunrunning and was closely tied to organized crime--two factions which certainly worked hand-in-glove at the time.

According to Garrison's information, Crisman knew Shaw well. One of Garrison's informants said Crisman was "the first man Clay called after being told he was in trouble." The same source added that Crisman "flies to New Orleans steadily. 1964, eleven times. 1965, 17 times, 1966, 32 times, 1967, 24 times . . . he seems to have no income and certainly spends a large sum of money on air travel."

*Dahl's correspondence

In August, 1967, a year before Garrison announced his subpoena of Crisman, Dahl allegedly corresponded with UFO researcher Gary Lesley, in which he said Crisman "has been in the deep South for some time . . . certain government agencies are very interested in his movements at all times. He sometimes drops out of sight for months on end and returns just as quietly. I do not know how he supports his manner of living, but he never lacks for money." (4)

When Garrison's office announced its subpoena of Crisman on Oct. 31, 1968, the press release read: "Our information indicates that since the early 1960s, (Crisman) has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of what is termed, in military language, a `hardware'--meaning those weapons sold to the U.S. government that are uniquely large and expensive."

According to FBI records on Crisman, disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act and on file at the Assassination Archives & Research Center (AARC) in Washington, D.C., Crisman was a Captain in the Army Air Corps and had flown during World War II. From March 20, 1946 to March 31, 1947, he was employed as a "special investigator" on veterans' matters for the state of Washington.

*Blank phase

What Crisman did between March 31 and June 21 when Harold Dahl encountered the six "doughnut-shaped" aircraft near Maury Island can't be determined, though presumably that's when he got the Harbor Patrol job. Then, on August 21, the FBI began a security check of Crisman for an unspecified position with the Atomic Energy Commission, which Crisman did not end up taking, according to the files.

The FBI's background check, which includes details about Crisman's life prior to the war, disclose that the Seattle office had a file dealing with the UFO incident at Maury Island, including a sworn statement from Crisman and another individual (presumably Dahl), dated Aug. 7.

Crisman's life from that time until Garrison ordered him to New Orleans is a confusing puzzle, as he turned up in many different and bizarre occupations. He was involved in a government program to help Gypsies (5); he was listed as the president of a car lot and official of at least a half-dozen companies that had no offices; he was a rabid right-wing talk show host on KAYE Radio in Puyallup, WA, under the name of Jon Gold: he was an industrial psychologist for Boeing, and he was a bishop in the Universal Life Church, a murky organization which seems to have had ties to the CIA and whose members included old Bay of Pigs veterans like Ferrie (6).

*Crime file

And there were Crisman's brushes with the law, including the early morning arrest the day after Garrison announced his subpoena of Crisman. He was arrested for what today would be considered drunk driving, in addition to carrying a concealed weapon--a loaded .38-caliber pistol.

The last of his legal troubles occurred a year before he died. At that time, Crisman was under investigation by the FBI for apparent stock fraud involving certificates of the Idaho First National Bank.

Until he died, garrison strongly believed Crisman was connected in some crucial way to the men Garrison was trying to indict for President Kennedy's murder--all men he believed were tied to the CIA's ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation to oust Fidel Castro.

Crisman disappeared into obscurity after appearing before the New Orleans Grand Jury that was hearing Garrison's case. He died with little fanfare on Dec. 10, 1975.

*Mystery remains

Twenty-five years after Crisman failed to yield much value for Garrison, he remains much of a mystery. But what can be pieced together indicates Crisman was part and parcel of the seamy underworld of the intelligence community that flourished during the 1950s and '60s.

*Garrison's conclusions

In a lengthy handwritten memo to Jonathan Blackmer, an investigator for the House select committee that re-investigated Kennedy's assassination in the late 1970s and had a keen interest in Crisman, Garrison spelled out what he had concluded about Crisman:

" . . . I suggest the only reasonable conclusion is that he was (and probably is, if still around), an operative at a deep cover level in a long-range, clandestine, intelligence mission directly (in terms of our national intelligence paranoia) related to maintaining national security . . . Crisman emerges as an operative at a supervisory level . . . acquired by the apparatus to carry out the menial jobs that are needed to push a current mission forward, a middle man--in the final analysis--between the mechanics who eliminate, and the handy men, who otherwise support a termination mission, on one hand, and the distant, far removed, deeply submerged command level, on the other."

The events surrounding the Maury Island episode in 1947 involving Crisman were serious and raise further questions about Paperclip and Crisman's involvement in it: They include the deaths of two Army G-2 intelligence officers enroute to Wright Patterson Air Force Base with specimens of the "slag-like" substance one of the discs supposedly spewed out, given to them by Crisman; a persistent newsman's sudden death, and the bugging of Arnold's hotel room while he investigated the sighting with Capt. E.J. Smith of United Airlines, a friend of his. (7)

*Why G-2?

The two Army intelligence officers had become involved probing what Dahl saw after having already paid a visit to Arnold. Why G-2 was so interested in those early UFO sightings has always been somewhat of a mystery. But perhaps it's not when considering that it was G-2's responsibility to keep a lid on Paperclip, as well as to provide security for Paperclip activities. Another function of G-2 involved illegal surveillance of anyone whose activities put Paperclip security at risk. (8) This illegal eavesdropping operation expanded into the notorious Army spying activities of the 1960s and 1970s.

When the two G-2 agents, Capt. William L. Davidson and Lt. Frank M. Browm were killed shortly after take-off, they were enroute to Wright-Patterson AFB, an installation that, if the objects Dahl saw were indeed Nazi hybrids that had malfunctioned, would have been the logical place for G-2 to escort the pieces. Wright Patterson was a major research and development center where many of the Peenemunde scientists had been gathered to continue their work. (9)

*Classified cargo

The Army reportedly admitted that "classified" material had been on board the flight. News accounts of the crash and statements by Army officials hinted that sabotage had brought down the B-25 on which Davidson and Brown were flying. Brown's wife Velma also spelled out her suspicions in a letter to Arnold. "I have never thought that Frank's death was an accident," she wrote.

The way U.S. intelligence agencies and the military treated UFO encounters in the late 1940s and early 1950s left similar bitter tastes. They were hiding something, that much is evident. The Maury Island incident was no exception. With this fresh look at Crisman, the theory that Operation Paperclip got a lot more than just rocket technology from the Third Reich becomes more credible.

If Maury Island was a hoax, as most ufologists today assume, then Crisman's role in perpetrating it is equally as bizarre; more so considering his intelligence connections.

What is clear is that the intelligence community was deeply immersed in the very events that launched contemporary ufology. And because it was, using men like Crisman, it deserves much closer scrutiny than it has ever been given.

*An award-winning investigative journalist, Anthony L. Kimery is an associated editor at American Banker Newsletters, a major publisher of financial publications, and former Washington Bureau Chief of Money Laundering Alert. His past reporting on intelligence community activities has appeared in a variety of national newspapers and magazines.

NOTES

1. One of the best accounts of Operation Paperclip is Linda Hunt's book, *Secret Agenda, St. Martin's Press, 1991.

2. *Argosy Magazine, XXXXXXX< XXXXXX, 19XX, pp. XX_XX. 3. Paperclip was still in full swing at the time of Kennedy's murder, and was actually responsible for the European "brain drain" phenomenon at the time. U.S. aerospace industries were among the top beneficiaries of the Paper-clip inspired immigration of German scientists to the U.S. in 1962-1963.

4. Copies in author's possession.

5. It may be coincidental, but some scientists brought to the U.S. via Paperclip had used Gypsies for experimentation.

6. Garrison expounds at length on the church and the similar organizations he contends were used as CIA fronts, in a memo he wrote to Jonathan Blackmer, an investigator for the select House committee of the late '70s that re-investigated Kennedy's assassination.

7. An unknown informant reportedly would call a local reporter after every meeting Arnold and Smith had with Crisman, Dahl and the two agents of G-2, and relate in detail what had been said.

8. Linda Hunt, *Secret Agenda, 1991.

9. Ibid

'UFO' Magazine, edited by Vicki Cooper (no relation to William Cooper -- who insists that Vicki has admitted that 'her' magazine was being funded by the CIA), carried an article in its Vol.6, No.5 issue, titled THE SECRET LIFE OF FRED L. CRISMAN, by veteran writer on financial conspiracy, Anthony L. Kimory (Note: IF William Cooper is correct, 'UFO' Magazine's apparent self- condemnation, in accusing the CIA, might indicate that those who helped establish UFO Magazine may be involved in a type of intelligence war with an opposing faction of the highly compart-mentalized CIA, similar to the internal CIA intelligence wars between what appears to be a 'Bavarian' and an 'American' faction referred to by former CIA operative Gunther Russbacher and others).

The article dealt with Fred Crisman's connection with PROJECT PAPERCLIP -- a top-secret operation which brought Nazi scientists to America as part of a program to duplicate Nazi flying discs, and to develop other revolutionary technologies. This operation was not actually carried out by the U.S. Constitutional government as we know it, but by a branch of Bavarian Intelligence which had INFILTRATED American Intelligence and later took control of the government through an internal fascist coup d'etat which involved the death of President John F. Kennedy. James Garrison, the Louisiana attorney depicted in the movie 'JFK' -- who investigated the John F. Kennedy assassination -- reportedly discovered the connection between Crisman and PAPERCLIP.

The Project reportedly sent elite teams of scientists and investigators, known as 'T-Forces', into Europe to confiscate all documents, files, hardware in German labs, and even scientific personnel who were involved in the Nazi aerospace research, an operation which led to the great European 'brain drain' following WWII. The plan was to develop UFO-type craft similar to those which the Nazis had experimented with. The Army, Navy, Army Air Force, CIA and OSS reportedly assisted in the 'T-Forces' and 'Paperclip' Projects, according to Kimory. Several high-ranking Nazis who assisted in the 'atrocities' were brought to America also, and their crimes suppressed. Many of these worked at the Peenemünde Aerodynamics Institute, which built the V-2 rockets, German fighter jets, etc., using forced slave labor from the Karlshagen concentration camp.

Peenemünde scientists, under PROJECT PAPERCLIP, according to Kimory, have controlled the U.S. rocketry, aerospace and space projects for over 20 years, with the majority of those at NASA being oblivious of the fact. Kimory claims that Wernher von Braun and Kurt Davis, heads of Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space center were both Nazi S.S. agents brought into America with the help of Nazi infiltrators or sympathizers in U.S. Intelligence.

Garrison arrested Clay Shaw on conspiracy to murder JFK, linking him with the CIA. However, when Garrison's star witness David Ferrie was found dead only a few days before Clay Shaw's trial, Garrison did not have enough against Shaw to make a convict- ion. It was later discovered in a FOIA document in 1977 that Clay Shaw HAD BEEN in the CIA since 1949. Garrison also linked Crisman to Shaw, and in fact sources indicate that Crisman was the first one Clay Shaw called when Shaw learned that he was in trouble. Is was discovered that Shaw was in business with European Nazis and fascists who were involved in covert operations sponsored by the CIA, according to the article. Shaw was also allegedly tied-in with the O.S.S. Crisman, who worked as a go-between in the Military-Industrial establishment (especially the aerospace companies which were the major beneficiaries of Project Paperclip) was believed by Garrison to be a 'middle man' within a deep-level intelligence network, working in-between those who gave the orders (which included assassinations) and those who carried them out.

Garrison also believed that Crisman was involved with the men who carried out the JFK assassination, and Crisman had also made several trips to Dallas just prior to JFK's death, which is why Garrison subpoenaed him. Crisman was also involved with a government program to 'help gypsies', was tied-in with the O.S.S., and was a member of a secret fraternity of former Intelligence officers, and was also involved with organized crime, according to Garrison's investigations.

Of course the strangest aspect of the Crisman connection was that it was Fred L. Crisman himself who handed over 'metal-slag' samples that were reportedly found after a UFO dropped the substance over the Maurey Island area near Tacoma, Washington in 1947. Crisman handed the samples to two Army G-2 Intelligence officers, Capt. William L. Davidson and Lt. Frank M. Brown. On their way to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (where several German Peenemünde scientists reportedly worked) with the 'classified' material their plane crashed and both were killed. News reports of the time mentioned that the plane MAY have been sabotaged.

Frank Brown's widow did in fact state her conviction that her husband was murdered. In addition to this, a particularly persistent reporter into the Maurey Island episode died shortly after the investigation, and Kenneth Arnold (who had his Mt. Rainier sighting and almost fatal engine failure only a few days later) reported that his room, where he often discussed the Maurey Island case with United Airlines Captain E. J. Smith, had been bugged. Kimory suggests that the Maurey Island UFO may have been a 'hybrid' of the Nazi UFO designs developed by the Military-Industrial Establishment and PROJECT PAPERCLIP, which might explain the mystery (for more information on 'Project Paperclip', see also: SECRET AGENDA, by Linda Hunt. St. Martins Press. 1991).

HOAX?

This is probably the only case on record of a Hoax indirectly leading to the death of UFO Investigators.

The story surfaced from Ray Palmer (editor of Amazing Stories), regarding a man called Fred Crisman who claimed to have actual physical evidence of a flying saucer.

Palmer passed the story onto Kenneth Arnold, who was investigating UFO reports in the Northwest. Arnold interviewed Crisman an his associate Harold Dahl who claimed they were harbour patrolmen (their first lie). Crisman reported that they had seen a doughnut-shaped craft dump piles of slag like material on the beach of Maury Island in Pugent Sound. The next morning a mysterious man in black had threatened Dahl, who claimed the man said 'I know a great deal more about this experience of yours that you will want to believe.'.

The 2 men showed Arnold the material who in turn contacted an Army Air Force intelligence officer, Lieutenant Frank Brown, who flew up from Hamiltion Field in California in the company of another Air Force officer.

The 2 Air Force officers immediately recognised the material as ordinary aluminium but did not say so in front of Arnold due to the fact that he would feel embarrassed. While flying back to Hamiltion, their B-25 caught fire and crashed, killing both officers.

Crisman and Dahl later confessed to investigators that they had made up the story. Before his death Crisman changed the Maury Incident story to that of an American Plane dropping radioactive waste instead of a UFO dropping unknown substances.

Linda Minor

03-24-2009, 02:53 PM

In my opinion Crisman's importance stems from this portion of his background from the timeline at the link which Ron posted but then overlooked:
"FLC recruited into the OSS to be trained as a liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force. Assigned to the China-Burma-India theater"
When he returned to Tacoma, Washington after the war, he becomes involved with a man named Harold Dahl and his son who were allegedly observers of UFO at Maury Island. Neither of the Dahls was ever clearly identified. There was a junk dealer named Harold Dahl living in Washington, who may have been the person mentioned:
"Four people, including Harold Dahl and his son, witnessed the event from a salvage boat in a nearby bay. They reported seeing six doughnut-shaped craft, approximately 20 feet in diameter, hovering high above. Five of the craft formed a circle surrounding a craft in the middle that was wobbling badly. The seemingly damaged craft suddenly dropped down about 700 feet, then spewed two substances -- one was a paper-like metal that floated in the bay and the other was a hot, steaming, black sludge that rained down, striking Dahl's son and killing his dog. Dahl reported these events to Fred Crisman, a man he believed to have some connections in the intelligence community.
Crisman subsequently went to Maury Island to investigate the incident. He found a great deal of both materials on the shore and recovered some for himself. Soon thereafter, Crisman shared his experience with Ray Palmer, a magazine publisher, who then hired Kenneth Arnold (the original pilot) to investigate further. Three days later, Arnold had more sightings, culminating with a woman recovering some unusual material in the same vicinity, who then turned the material over to FBI agent Guy Banister. Capt. Lee Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, Air Force investigators under the command of Gen. Nathan Twining, soon joined Arnold in retrieving debris on Maury Island. Ultimately, Crisman was compelled to turn over his samples to the two Air Force investigators.
Classified documents, recently discovered under the freedom of information act, also indicate that Crisman turned additional samples he had held back over to CIA agent Clay Shaw." http://www.the-boondocks.org/forum/index.php?t=selmsg&reply_count=0&&frm_id=19

What is intriguing to me is that there was another man named Harold E. (Whitey) Dahl, an internationally-known American pilot from Champaign, Ill., who had served with loyalist forces in Spain during its civil war, then was captured by Franco in 1937. During his imprisonment, his blonde "wife," actress Edith Rogers, who was "appearing as a singer and a violinist at a Philadelphia theater" at the time of his release, had written and sent her picture to Franco to try to obtain his freedom. Whitey was freed "after dodging a Spanish Nationalist firing squad and spending almost three years In prison" in March 1940. Later news reports indicated Edith was only posing as his wife.

Five years later his name turned up again in the news when he was "acquitted on 10 of 14 charges by an R.C.A.F. court martial" but dismissed from the Royal Canadian Air Force. His crime was "disposing of $650 worth of RCAF property, including a vacuum cleaner and two rafts, while stationed in Brazil" where he was commander of a transport unit of the RAF.

The most telling story about Whitey was disseminated in 1958 by the infamous NAMA, the North American Newspaper Alliance acquired by Ernest L. Cuneo in the mid-1950's. The headline read " Civilization and Changing Times Can't Deter Soldiers of Fortune."

A New York lawyer, Cuneo was associate counsel to the Democratic National Committee during the FDR administration and was close to the clique involving another British spy named Dahl, Roald Dahl, the children's author, who was the subject of a recent book by Jennet Conant called "The Irregulars."

In my opinion, Crisman and Whitey Dahl were actively working for the same unit of intelligence for which Roald Dahl worked. When you read The Irregulars, you get a sense that the British had no respect for any "special relationship" with America. They only had respect for their own investments and their own economy and were out to subvert whatever attempts the Americans would make to end their colonial enterprise. This was done through propaganda of the highest order directed at Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and especially FDR's then vice-president Henry A. Wallace, who wanted to force the Brits to compete against American private interests in air routes after the war.

It is my belief that Crisman, another American mercenary, was on the payroll of that same British intelligence group attempting to find out what was going on at the Tacoma plant of Boeing. The propaganda machine was geared up to create the stories about extra-terrestrials in a similar vein with the work of Derek Dempster (related to Ferguson Dempster) from BOAC who left the RAF to publish another rag about flying saucers. http://www.fsr.org.uk/fsrintroduction.html
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2003/oct/m17-007.shtml
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3621&hl=dempster&st=45
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=13964&hl=dempster

It should also be remembered that Clay Shaw was also very close to men in high British circles while he served in Europe during WWII.

David Guyatt

03-24-2009, 03:43 PM

How very intriguing Linda. FBI agent Guy Bannister was, as has been noted elsewhere on this forum, the one time head of the FBI's real "X Files", a fact I continue to find fascinating to this day.

I do not recall anything on Dempster I have to say, although I knew Brinsley Le Poer Trench well also knew and remained in occasional contact with Gordon Creighton who took over as editor of FSR after Brinsley. It was only many years (actually several decades) later that I began to suspect something other may have been involved and your post on Dempster reinforces that suspicion.

Brinsley and Desmond Leslie both championed the fake "contactee" George Adamski and this poses some questions. Also, some of the people Brinsley introduced me to (he was very well connected) often had prior military/RAF backgrounds. I'm thinking particularly of the the head of BUFORA, the British UFO investigation group who's name now escapes me. Meanwhile, Gordon was formerly in the Foreign Office until his retirement.

All in all I think you could well be right that these Brits were up to something -- and that something may well have been a covert operation aimed at learning the nature of the technology the US acquired from the Nazis at the close of WWII.

Jan Klimkowski;Jun 12 2008, 05:12 PM
There are some Wackenhut clues in a book called "The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro" by Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith.
Appendix Three is the transcript of a prison interview with Michael Riconosciuto (MR), mainly revolving around Fred Crisman (FC) whom MR claims to have known since he was a child. The first part of the interview concerns claims that the "Maury Island Incident" was effectively a cover story put together by Crisman to disguise the crash of an experimental plane designed by Nazi Paperclip scientists and carrying some sort of radioactive device. Guy Banister was also involved in the propagation of the general flying saucers cover story. (Levenda separately documents this.)

Quite where the Cabazon reservation and Riconoscuito's top secret, deep black, experiments fit into this is currently unknowable.

Paperclip > Maury Island > Cabazon > ?????

>>> Psyop?

>>> As disinformation or coverup?

(my emphasis in quote below)

Crisman's life from that time until Garrison ordered him to New Orleans is a confusing puzzle, as he turned up in many different and bizarre occupations. He was involved in a government program to help Gypsies (5); he was listed as the president of a car lot and official of at least a half-dozen companies that had no offices; he was a rabid right-wing talk show host on KAYE Radio in Puyallup, WA, under the name of Jon Gold: he was an industrial psychologist for Boeing, and he was a bishop in the Universal Life Church, a murky organization which seems to have had ties to the CIA and whose members included old Bay of Pigs veterans like Ferrie (6).

Uh oh. :stickyman:

One of those pesky Wandering Bishops just strolled by again....

It's Keyser Söze time.

David Guyatt

03-25-2009, 08:53 AM

Whoa! I had no idea that Crisman was one of them thar pesky wandering bishops Jan. Nor that Riconosciuto was involved in this either.

This seems to again point to the Himmlerian/Thule Gesellschaft "Schwarze Sonne" aspect of this Nazi technology.

Ron Williams

03-25-2009, 02:46 PM

Thanks Linda, David, and Jan for adding to the thread.

Linda, I didn’t overlook that item about Crisman and the OSS if that is what you meant, but that comes from the so-called “Easy Papers” document and as far as I am aware that is still unknown territory. That is why I made a special notation in the time-line for anything that is claimed in that document. And thanks for the info about The Irregulars book. That is something I definitely want to read. My library system has a copy of it and I hope to have it soon.

My general thinking for the time-line was that there might be some people with an interest in Fred Lee Crisman but they would not have access to the two main books, Maury Island UFO by Kenn Thomas and Crisman’s book Murder of City …Tacoma.

Regarding the Riconosciutos: Crisman and Michael’s father, Marshall Riconosciuto, were boyhood friends growing up in Tacoma, Washington. Michael gave a prison interview with Kenn Thomas that is an appendix in Maury Island UFO.

Take a look at the time-line and I would be happy to try and answer any further questions from information in the sources that I have available.

In addition, those who are members of the JFK Research Forum have access to all the info on Crisman posted there.

Jan,
My opinion is that what is largely unknown is the same thing I stated was overlooked by the outline attached to Ron's post. Not the OSS, but this:
"liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force"

Friday, April 20, 2007
MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said TOO Much, Part 7
In February, 2001, through his lawyers, Riconoscuito contacted Colin Powell and John Ashcroft offering information about terrorists within the United States who planned to hijack planes and bomb American sites. Michael also offered information about “sleepers” in the United States. He was also concerned about the possibility that 37 Soviet surface to air missiles had been shipped from Bulgaria to Canada and that they could be misused. In return for his information, he asked for immunity for himself and his contacts regarding anything learned in following up his leads. Nothing was done. This man had been involved in providing Stinger missiles (SAMs) and other weapons for the Mujahadeen in the 1980s and had even dealt with Osama bin Laden, who was known as Tim Osman when he visited the United States. After he contacted the press about the FBI rejecting his warnings, he was moved from Allenwood Federal Prison to the hole in Springfield, Missouri. He was not allowed to take any records or papers with him.

Mike claimed that the famous MI6 agent, Sir Denis Kendall advised Oliver North before he appeared before the Senate. Kendall was proprietor of some biological labs in Los Angeles.

At one point, he asked to speak to representatives of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network because he had something to say about SWIFT chips. SWIFT is a an exchange agency for international banks. He hinted that he could prove that the US had somehow tampered with SWIFT chips.

Some say Mike was a casualty in a small war between two intelligence factions. On the one side is the Aquarius faction, clustered around MJ-12. It can be assumed that it is somehow tied to the rogue intelligence operations that emerged in the late 1970s called The Enterprise. The other faction , COM-12, is based in Naval Intelligence and is trying to keep intelligence work lawful.

The late Sherman Skolnick believed that Robert Booth Nichols was somehow involved in the World Trade Center bombing. When he told Michael, he went through the roof. Michael shouted into the phone:” “ *get* *off* *that* *case*!” Skolnick insisted Nichols was part of Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.

Robert Booth Nichols ( born 1943) was a licensed arms trader and invented the submachine pistol. He was an admitted CIA agent. In 1993 he sued the LA police, claiming they had ruined a multi million dollar arms deal in an action that ended as a mistrial. He claimed to be an intelligence expert and his office/apartment number in Marina Del Rey was “007.” Nichols has been described as a “handsome, dashing figure, frequently described as ‘Clark Gable without ears….” His friend Steven Seagal got him a cameo role in “Under Siege.” He headed Meridian International Logistics (MIL) and did substantial business in Japan and Australia. MIL also controlled Meridian Arms Corporation, and eccentric scientific genius Michael Riconosciuto was Vice President of that firm for a brief period. MIL, in 1988, made a substantial grant to a Japanese medical school, probably to carry out research in biological weapons. Directors of MIL include Harold Okimoto and Eugene Giaquinto, head of MCA Home Entertainment. He and Riconoscuito worked together in the development of weapons at the once secret Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture. Although that venture was also involved in the drug trade used to support the Nicaraguan Contras, there is no solid evidence that Nichols was intimately involved in the domestic side of the drug business.

Nichols was Senior Vice President of F.I.D.C.O.( First Intercontinental Development Corporation) a firm closely tied to the NSA that carried out various contracts, including construction, abroad. Another director and friend is George Pender, who is also tied to the Summa Corporation , which is linked to Howard Hughes. Pender, Meese, Dr. Earl Brian, and Nichols were close friends of Ronald Reagan and members of his California kitchen cabinet. Reagan advisor Michael McManus and Clint Murchison, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,were also directors of F.I.D.C.O.

Nichols and Earl Brian were involved in a firm known as Bio-Rad Laboratories, which occupied some of the property owned by Hercules, in Hercules, California. The above facility looks insignificant, but it sets on twenty underground stories. It manufactures the most deadly biological substances known to man. Their most important produce was Cytotoxic Tlymphocytes, which can be used to wipe out people with certain DNA codes. He has also claimed that Bio-Rad had developed deadly toxins designed to attack people with certain DNA structures. In other words, it can attack races. Conversely, people with certain DNA structures could be immunized, leaving others to be attack by biological agents. About the time one has written off this claim, evidence turns up that there could be some truth to it.

In September 1987, FBI Special agent Thomas Gates of Los Angeles began investigating Nichols and International Logistics. They suspected he was running drugs in connection with Eugene Giaquinto, and they thought Eugene Giaquinto was funneling MCA-Home Entertainment profits to Ed “The Conductor” Sciandra of the Buffalino crime family. They also thought Nichols had ties to the Gambino family and was infolved in a $500 million stock fraud case. The matter became public when the feds indicted Giaquinto and said they had a picture of him handing Nichols a box and tapes of their conversations. Nichols’ lawyer introduced a great deal of information about his involvement with prominent people and the White House and offered to call witnesses from the intelligence community. Nichols admitted that he had no visible means of support for fifteen years. Then the trial simply stopped and was never resumed.

Attorney Allan Boyak, a former DEA agent, published a piece on Nichols in the Executive Intelligence Review that claimed Nichols was a major heroin dealer but that he kept all of his dealings outside the country. Boyak also found Nichols had close ties to the leading Japanese crime figure in Hawaii, Harold Okimoto. Okimoto was a ranking Japanese intelligence officer in World War II.

For a time in the late 1980s, Nichols was head of the Special Service Unit in Dominica. It is a small security force for the island. It is said that there boiling lake that provides energy for a remarkable geothermal power plant on the island used to power multiple intelligence computer complexes belonging to Project Echelon, a joint effort of the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Hughes Aviation had some kind of tie to the power plant. It was designed to combine as many data bases as possible and was coordinated by Douglas Dillon of New York City, a former Eisenhower and Kennedy Official. Casolaro knew about this and believed Michael Riconosciuto‘s claim that it is going private, and the late Senator Frank Church had warned congress about efforts to take it private. Nichols also operated a rum-importing firm that some thought was a cover for drug operations, including moving China white heroin into Mexico.

According to Robert Booth Nichols’ estranged brother, James, he was a hit man for the Tongs in Hawaii as a young man. Boyak claims that Nichols laundered $50,200,000,000 for Ferdinand Marcos. It’s a good bet that this was done on behalf of the CIA and that the money was World War II Japanese gold that Marcos was minding for the US. Nichols has a castle outside Milan and an estate in Hawaii as well as the Marina Del Ray home. Bob Nichols also had business ties with the Yakuza crime clan of Japan.

Robert Booth Nichols was a major source for Joseph “Danny” Casolaro ( 1947-1991) , who was investigating PROMIS, and died an apparent suicide in a Martinsburg, West Virginia motel on August 10, 1991. Barbara Bittinger, the assistant head housekeeper, reported that there was blood everywhere but it also appeared that someone tried to wipe it up. He was not a nail-biter but three nails were damaged and there was a bruise on the top of his head. Danny had told his brother, Dr. Tony Casolaro, that he had been receiving a number of threatening telephone calls. Danny told FBI agent Thomas Gates that Nichols warned him, "If you continue this investigation, you will die." He went to Martinsburg to meet a “source,” Bill turner, who gave him documents about corruption in Hughes Aircraft. The papers were not found in Danny’s hotel room,. He told Turner there was a second source he planned to meet there.

Danny published Computer Age for ten years before giving it up in 1990. Studying the origin of PROMIS software was a natural for him. Michael Riconosciuto provided the initial information on it, and Bill Hamilton egged him on. Soon he was chasing many leads and meeting spooks and quasi spooks. Other information came from Alan D. Standorf, an NSA employee who worked in electronic intelligence. He also provided information to Michael Riconosciuto. Standorf gave Danny records showing wire payments to Brian from foreign entities, most likely in connection with the sale of PROMIS software. He also provided information on banking scandal and government ties to the underworld. In room 900 of the Hilton, Danny placed a high speed copier so that Standof’s files could be quickly copied and returned. Before Danny was found dead, Standorf’s body would be found stuffed into his a car trunk at Washington National Airport on January 31, 1991. He died from a blow to the head and luggage and personal items were placed on top of his body.

Danny learned about the BCCI scandal before it became news and found the story of the Republicans' 1980 deal with the Iranians fascinating. He had earlier published a novel about the JFK conspiracy and was prepared to look for pieces that would fit together and to believe that all was not as it appeared to be. David Corn of The Nation, who later worked to hard to discredit critics of the official 9/11 explanation, said that Casolaro was pursuing the “silly theory” of the Christic Institute that a secret intelligence and political team, which Danny called the Octopus, was somehow behind the theft of PROMIS, supplying the Contras, the October, 1980 Surprise, the BCCI scandal and much else. Eliot Richardson, attorney for Inslaw, had written Attorney General Thornburgh asking for an independent counsel to investigate the PROMIS case and never got a reply. Richardson later said: "I have never understood why ... I mean, I was attorney general when Thornburg was a U.S. attorney. I appointed him chairman of a committee of U.S. attorneys, newly formed for the first time. I am a responsible former public official. I am not a wild-eyed nut." Richardson thought Danny’s death a suicide was “highly implausible” and should be investigated further.
Posted by Sherman De Brosse at 12:21 PM

Digest this information. Then ask yourself "who was Denis Kendall?"

Linda Minor

03-25-2009, 05:20 PM

There was another Brit also lurking around the scene in California in 1960, as well as later, named Denis Kendall 34 of 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood. This is not only in Hollywood; it's in Laurel Canyon! http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319+N+Doheny+Drive+West+Hollywood+ca&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=UdGdSa-eD6DlmQe2nM3mBA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title

Oakland Tribune--October 1960
INGLEWOOD, Oct. 14-UP--Admiral Arthur W. Radford, USN, ret., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has joined the board of directors of American Marc Inc., W. Denis Kendall, the company's president, announced.

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What was Kendall's connection to the Riconosciutos?
http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/11.htm
CHAPTER 11
Michael Riconosciuto had some, if not all, of the answers to the gene splicing technology that Zokosky and Wackenhut had attempted to sell to the Army weapons division in 1983, and later fronted to the Japanese, through Meridian International Logisitcs, in 1988.
I felt that time was of the essence in uncovering the nature of this technology, so I pushed Riconosciuto to talk about it. "It looks like Earl Brian, Sir Denis Kendall,
...I had read about Sir Denis Kendall, the famous M16 British intelligence officer during World War II, in "Who's Who in America," 1989 issue. Kendall had worked with Michael in some, as yet, undefined capacity. Bobby Riconosciuto had noted to me that Kendall and Ted Gunderson had counseled Oliver North prior to his testimony to Congress. Kendall was also heavily involved in arms and biotechnology, according to Michael Riconosciuto. "Who's Who" described Denis William Kendall as a "medical electronic equipment company executive," born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England on May 27, 1903. Kendall came to the United States in 1923, was naturalized in 1957. His background included being a consultant to the Pentagon on high velocity small arms from 1940 to 1945. He was listed on Churchill's War Cabinet Gun Board from 1941-45. He was later executive vice president of Brunswick Ordnance Plant in New Jersey from 1952 to 1956. From 1961 to 1973, became president of Dynapower Medonics in Los Angeles, and chief executive of Kendall Medical International, Inc. in Los Angeles in 1973.
Hercules Research, Wackenut, Zokosky and Bob Nichols were all involved in the same biotechnological agenda ..."
----------

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/12.htm
The issue of Viedenieks' connection with Earl Brian or Terry Sanford, or even Nichols himself, had not been raised publicly yet. At the time, I didn't place any particular significance on Nichols' relationship with Earl Brian or Peter Viedenieks, I just took the information at face value and wrote it in my notes.

Nichols reacted violently when I asked him if he had any business dealings with Brunswick Corporation in New Jersey. He jumped up from his chair by the window and yelled, "Absolutely not!"

I quickly explained that I had looked up Sir Denis Kendall (the famous M16 World War II British officer) in "Who's Who in America" and learned that he had once been associated with Brunswick. Nichols said he did not know Sir Denis Kendall. His eyes told me otherwise.

I noted that was strange since Michael Riconosciuto seemed to know him well. Nichols and Zokosky exchanged glances. I further explained that Bobby Riconosciuto said she had been to Kendall's home on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills with her children once. She had often called Kendall when she was trying to locate Michael, and within hours of calling Kendall, Michael always called her back. Nichols and Zokosky seemed disturbed by that statement.

I didn't mention that Riconoscituo had stated Kendall was Nichols' supervisor (CIA "handler"), or that J.M., Ted Gunderson's research partner, had found a brochure in Ted's files advertising for Swedish nurses at a medical research complex in Mexico. The brochure contained both Gunderson's picture and Sir Denis Kendall's.

You must read: Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/index.html
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr102.html

Just to the west of Laurel Canyon, and slightly to the east of Coldwater Canyon, lies a large estate known as Greystone Park, home of the long-vacant Greystone Mansion. The home, and the grounds it sits on, is said to be, to this day, the most expensive private residence ever built in the city of Los Angeles. Constructed in the 1920s, the home and grounds carried the then-unfathomable price tag of $4,000,000 (by way of comparison, the Lookout Inn, built a decade-and-a-half earlier, was projected to cost from $86,000-$100,000; in other words, the single-family residence cost at least 40 times what the lavish 70-room inn cost – and the inn required bringing infrastructure and building materials to a remote mountaintop). The massive, 46,000 square-foot edifice sits amid 22 lavishly landscaped acres of prime Hollywood Hills real estate. This rather ostentatious home was built by uberwealthy oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny as a wedding present for his son, Edward “Ned” Doheny, Jr.. ...Upon the home’s completion, in September 1928, young Ned Doheny and his new bride moved into the humble abode. Within months, the home would be bloodstained; soon after, it would be permanently abandoned.

Poor Ned, you see, was found dead in the cavernous home on February 16, 1929. Near him lay the lifeless body of his assistant/personal secretary, [Theodore] Hugh Plunkett. Both men had been shot. Despite persistent rumors of an inordinately long delay in reporting the deaths, and of the bodies having been moved to re-stage the crime scene, no formal inquest was ever conducted and the case was written off as a murder/suicide arising from a gay lovers’ quarrel. Plunkett was said to be the triggerman and the media quickly went into a frenzy playing up the scandalous homosexuality angle and portraying young Plunkett as positively demented.
It is anyone’s guess whether or not the two really were gay lovers, but it matters little; the rest of the story was almost certainly a work of fiction. In reality, both men were likely murdered as part of the massive cover-up/damage-control operation that followed the disclosure of the Harding-era Teapot Dome scandal, which the Doheny family, as it turns out, was very deeply immersed in. The murder/suicide scenario was then trotted out because, as we all know, if the alleged perpetrator is already dead, it pretty much eliminates the need for things like investigations and trials....Some forty years after those gunshots rang out in the opulent Greystone Mansion, a new Ned Doheny, scion of the very same Doheny oil clan, would join the ranks of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters club.

-------
If anything, Kendall brings us back to Laurel Canyon and the 1920's before there were talking pictures a la Hollywood. Kendall's address, years after Hollywood became synonymous with movies and rock stars, was 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood--in the heart of Laurel Canyon.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319+N+Doheny+Drive+West+Hollywood&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=tl7KSZHJDZLDtwep6oCxAw&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=image

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/2550
Greystone, the Doheny mansion which sits on the hillside above Doheny Road on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills is now a park, so named officially in 1971.When it was built,in the late 1920s, it was the second largest house (56,000 square feet) in California after Hearst’s castle at San Simeon.

In the 1920s, all of that area, which includes what is now Trousdale Estates and the adjacent Doheny Drive properties, extending westward and upwards into the foothills of the range that is known as the Santa Monica Mountains; all of it belonged to the Dohenys, and most specifically Edward L. Doheny Jr., known as “Ned,” son of E.L. Sr., who first struck oil in the Los Angeles area in 1892. At the beginning of the 20th century, the elder Mr. Doheny was pumping enough oil to rival only one other oilman of consequence in America, John D. Rockefeller.

In those early days, the family lived where all the rich of Los Angeles lived, in the southwest part of the city (Beverly Hills and the western sections like Holmby, Bel Air and Brentwood had yet to be developed), in the vicinity of West Adams Boulevard, Chester Square and Lafayette Square.

Sunset Boulevard around what is now Doheny Drive wasn’t much more than a bridlepath (and often used as one). What is West Hollywood now was then poinsettia fields in an area known as Sherman. The Dohenys used their land in the hills now know as Truesdale, as a ranch -- a place to get away -- out of town, for horseback riding, hiking and other healthy outdoor activities.

By the early 1920s, young Ned, with his wife Lucy and their five children occupied a large and stylish house up in these hills, as did several of their relatives with young families like them.

By the early 1920s, E.L.Doheny Sr. was one of the richest men in the world with hugely productive oil fields in the southwest and Mexico. His wealth made him a very powerful man politically, and he used that power to ingratiate himself with, and even create, national political leaders, such as presidents. One president whose administration was profoundly affected by old man Doheny was Warren G. Harding.

President Harding had a Secretary of the Interior named Albert Fall who was a very close friend of the elder Mr. Doheny. In fact, Mr. Doheny once gave Mr. Fall $100,000 to help him along (that’s about $10 million in today’s dollars). In return -- out of gratitude of course, as it so often is with our politicians -- Secretary Fall made it possible for Mr. Doheny to secure oil drilling rights to a large deposit of oil on federally owned lands, particularly one rich one which was called the Teapot Dome because its vastness was shaped like ... a teapot.

The Teapot Dome was to become the nemesis in the downfall of Warren G. Harding and his administration, as well as the greatest political scandal in American history until Watergate, a half century later. Albert Fall was disgraced and went to jail. Mr. Doheny escaped a prison sentence by the skin of his teeth and an incident which caused his family fortunes took a far more tragic turn.

The $100,000 cash bribe to the Secretary of Interior Fall had been hand delivered in a black valise, by Mr. Doheny's son Ned, who was then in his late twenties, and a boyhood friend who was then employee of the family, Hugh Plunkett. That single act -- carrying that black bag and handing it over to Secretary Fall -- was to seal the fate of both young Doheny and his friend Plunkett in a most terrible way.

In the early 1920s while all of this political mischief was going on with men in high places in Washington, Ned Doheny, an only child, decided to build his dream house on the ranch land in the hills. The original design by architect Wallace Neff, was inspired by the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and, like Rosecliff it became a massive project, dwarfed at the time only by the activities of William Randolph Hearst who at about the same time farther up the coast at San Simeon, was building his castle.

The property of pines and barren hillside was transformed and planted and replanted to make way for a sprawling stone mansion with broad terraces overlooking the city (which at that time was mainly bungalows and clusters of stores amidst a lot of vacant land) as far south as the family oil wells on Signal Hills, just north of Long Beach. Hollywood was several miles down those almost remote roads to the east, and what is now Downtown L.A. was about forty-five minutes away.

As the house was abuilding, Ned Doheny and his wife Lucy (daughter of a local gas station owner), and their designers scoured Europe for artisans and craftsmen, and for antiques and interiors. After several years and an expenditure said to be about $5 million (or a hundred times that today), Greystone was finished. Huge, regal, a kind of neo-Tudor confection, solid and substantial, it was equipped with all the luxuries any young modern family could want or need, including stables, and athletic facilities, tennis courts, gyms, swimming pools, screening room, ballroom, bowling alleys. It even had its own switchboard and telephone system.

It was the largest house in Los Angeles and it commanded a legend by the time of its completion. Later generations of Los Angelenos called it Dragonwyck, after the movie that was said to have been inspired by the property.

The house was completed to take occupany in the late summer of 1928. The family, Ned and Lucy Doheny, their five children and fifteen in staff, moved in in the autumn.

The son’s taking possession of Greystone was a milestone in the life of E.L. Doheny, a rough and tumble oil wildcatter who worked long and hard at his quest to finally hit one of the biggest oil strikes on the North American continent that would make him rich and powerful. And now, at the completion of the son’s palace, he, and because of him, the son, he was also in trouble with the Feds. Because of Teapot Dome.

A bribe is a bribe is a bribe. And a hundred grand to a White House Cabinet member? All this, not to mention Hugh Plunkett, the Dohenys’ retainer, the trusted confidant of young Ned -- so trusted that he signed many of the checks in the building of Greystone -- Hugh Plunkett was in trouble with the Feds too. The black bag with the hundred grand that the two pals delivered that day to Secretary Fall, was under investigation.

At the same time the young Dohenys were the golden couple of Los Angeles society with their elevated Eastern social and political connections. When they finally moved into Greystone, with its real kind of palatial splendor, with the world at their feet, so to speak, the shadow of the Teapot Dome had begun to cast its shadow.

Congress was calling for blood. Secretary Fall went first: indicted, convicted and sent to jail. And the bribers? They were next. And who were they? Were they the men who carried the black bag of cash? Young Ned Doheny and his cohort Hugh Plunkett? Or was it the man with the money, E.L. Sr.?

The world was about to find out because a Senate investigation had been launched, and the guilty were going to be dealt with. Now a pillar of the community and an elder; one of the world's richest men, Doheny couldn’t fathom the ramifications. Now a pious Roman Catholic as well, a great contributor to the community and most especially the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles, guilt was, in his mind, outside his purview, yet now under his skin.

There was now speculation going on in the national press: what would happen to E. L. Doheny when he had to testify under oath before the committee? Would he fold? Would he incriminate himself? Was this the end of the line?

The world was about to see. It was going to start first with the two men who carried the black bag of bribery: Ned Doheny and his buddy Hugh Plunkett. The family was in turmoil. Neither father nor son had any plans on taking the rap. They intended to protect themselves. Hugh Plunkett, however, was a different story. He was involved also. And his relationship to the family was so close that there could be a case made for his taking matters into his own hands. And getting his own hands dirty.

This reality became apparent to Plunkett as the date of testifying in Washington drew nearer. His own behavior, as revealed in later testimony became unhinged to the point that his friend, young Doheny suggested he be institutionalized until he calmed down.

He did not calm down, however. And as young Doheny pulled away from his boyhood friend, the unhinging took a sharper turn for the worse,. Finally, on a Saturday night in early February 1929, only four months after the young family moved into the house, a very troubled Hugh Plunkett drove up to Greystone from his apartment in Hollywood. A familiar figure on the property, he was let through by the gatekeeper at the big gate (still standing) on Doheny Road.

Just exactly what his movements were after that will never be known precisely. However, Plunkett did let himself into the big house (he had his own key), and made his way to a bedroom in the east wing of the house, a room which might have been available for his use. It was there that he called his friend Ned, who was in another part of the house, through the switchboard, and asked if they could talk.

Ned Doheny, a good-looking man of thirty-five with dark hair, sharp dark eyes, a Black Irishman’s bearing and sometimes alcoholic demeanor, in his silk dressing robe, made his way across the long corridors of the house to meet with Hugh Plunkett.

What happened thereafter remains, seventy-eight years later, mere speculation. The newspaper accounts at the time generally went like this:

Lucy Doheny had been sitting by herself in the library reading magazines when about 11:30 she heard a gunshot. According to press accounts, she didn’t look for the source of the gunshots, nor did she call the police. Instead she called the family doctor who was with his wife at the movies in Beverly Hills. Paged at the theatre, the doctor immediately drove up to the house (about a ten minute drive from downtown Beverly Hills). There he was greeted at the imposing front door (see photos) by Lucy Doheny who led him immediately escorted him to the east wing where she claimed to have heard the gunshot.

At that point, as the doctor and Mrs. Doheny approached the room where Plunkett had called Ned from, Plunkett came out of the room in a state of anguish and with a gun in his hand.. On seeing the family doctor (whom he knew) and Lucy Doheny, he ran back into the room and slammed the door. Whereupon, the doctor and Lucy Doheny (later) claimed they heard another gunshot.

Mind you, this, according to the official story, occurred more than twenty minutes after Lucy Doheny had heard the first gunshot.

Then the doctor and Mrs. Doheny entered the room where they found Hugh Plunkett dead on the floor in a pool of blood, and Ned Doheny also dead on the floor in a pool of blood. This was the official story carried in the newspapers in Los Angeles the next day.

The gunshots occurred around eleven-thirty and midnight that Saturday night. Whatever occurred afterward is obscured by time and testimony. The police were called almost three hours later at 2 a.m. In the meantime, many of Lucy Doheny’s relatives who lived nearby showed up at the house. Called, obviously by someone in the house. Later it was admitted that the bodies were also moved before the police could see and photograph them.

The Dohenys were the richest family in Los Angeles. Their oil wells were everywhere including in many neighborhoods. The sudden death by gunshot of the only son and heir was big news. Everyone wanted to know what happened. Two days later the local DA’s office, however, closed an inquest on the deaths. It was officially concluded that Hugh Plunkett shot Ned Doheny, his boyhood friend, and then turned the gun on himself. About a half hour later, of course, if the official story is to be believed.

Ned Doheny was buried with pomp and circumstance a few days later. His stepmother (his mother, a half-Cherokee, had died many years before), Estelle Doheny, was one of the biggest contributors to the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles (she owned the Gutenberg Bible, acquired many decades later by Bill Gates). Curiously, Ned was not buried in a Catholic cemetery but instead at Forest Lawn in Glendale. The reason for this has never been explained, although it could be deduced that his death was not necessarily by murder but perhaps by his own hand -- a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church.

After a much simpler ceremony, without pomp or public clamoring, Hugh Plunkett was buried in the same cemetery just a few yards from his friend Ned. From all this arose the story that the two men had been lovers, and that the quarrel which had ensued that night in the big house had to do with their relationship. The implication that both men were at some time engaged in a homosexual relationship became the note of interest in the case, and remains so to this day. Nothing was ever written in the newspapers at the time about the fact that Hugh Plunkett was, with Ned Doheny, a participant in the bribery of Albert Fall, and was scheduled to testify before the Senate investigating committee, and that the elder Doheny would be next..
Instead it was assumed that the mystery of their deaths had to do with a sexual drama. On the face of it, the idea that two men in their thirties who had been friends since their teenage years were having a sexual relationship is almost absurd. The idea that Hugh Plunkett might have been terrified and enraged that he was going to be “hung out to dry” and face jail time in the case of delivering the bribe money to Secretary Fall, is another matter entirely.

However, none of that came to the surface. The two men were buried days later, and everyone’s life went on. The sympathy for the father of the dead man, Ned Doheny, was so great that the Congressional investigation was called off and he never had to testify.
Lucy Doheny, a little more than a year later, almost to the day, married a man named Leigh Batson, a stockbroker whom she and her late husband had known for some time. Six years later E.L. Doheny Sr. died – “of a broken heart” it was written in the papers.

The Batsons lived at Greystone for the next twenty-six years, raising her children, until 1955 when Mrs. Doheny Batson decided the big house was too big. She gave the property to the city of Beverly Hills and built a new “smaller” house for herself on the adjoining property that ran along Schuyler Road.

Equipped with 22 bathrooms, the newer house, called “The Knoll” was later sold to film producer Dino di Laurentiis, who sold it to singer Kenny Rogers, who in turn sold it to Barbara and Marvin Davis. With the occupation by the Davises, “The Knoll” has been the scene of some of the greatest parties in America in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lucy Smith Doheny Batson lived to a very great age, over a hundred. At the end of her life, she moved to a large (5000 square feet) and luxurious condominium on the Wilshire Corridor. A very formidable character, at the very end of her life, she would arise each morning, get herself dressed up for a luncheon engagement, place herself in a wingback chair in her livingroom, her handbag on the floor at her side, and sit. And wait.

Her grandchildren would visit the intimidating dowager. It was said that even her grandchildren, ever curious, were afraid to ask her “what happened” in the big house on that fateful night in February 1929. One of them told me once that they wondered why she went to the trouble to dress and sit there, handbag ready, and wait. Was she, the very devout Roman Catholic lady, waiting for her Maker to come a-calling. Was she worried about the Judgment Day, the believer that she was? Did she have reason to suffer guilt? Was it because of what really happened to Neddie and Hughie on that fateful February night almost seventy years before?

These are their ghosts of Greystone. JH, with his Digital taking in the architectural details one afternoon, and on hearing the story, he thinks so. His comments reminded me of the house that sat on the top of the hill behind Greystone, visible through the giant pine trees still standing. That house, built in 1927, belonged to Gypsy Rose Lee in the 1960s. She died there in 1970. Later owners of the house claimed that Gypsy’s ghost was active in the house, so much so that they sold it to another party. That buyer became so exasperated by her ghost that they too sold it. The third new buyer, aware of the ghostliness of the property, tore the place down and built a new house in its stead.

A tour of Greystone produces a curiosity that has no direction and no conclusion. There is a vibe about the place. Most visitors have no idea of the house’s story or the economic importance of the Dohenys in Los Angeles, or the scourge of the political scandal that destroyed at least two young lives. The house however, 78 years after its building, still stands stolid, solid and substantial. It has been used many many times for television and film shoots.

For many years it was occupied by the American Film Institute. It remains, however, lifeless, a hapless reminder of great wealth, without a hint of spent lives.

The story of Ned Doheny ended up in rumor to be linked with Hugh Plunkett, his boyhood friend. The idea that the two men died because of a lover’s quarrel is a compelling but deeply misleading testament to the corruption of the patriarch. When E. L. Doheny died in 1935, his widow Estelle buried all of his personal papers. She later gave tens of millions more to the Church. They also built a library at USC in memory of Ned. But they also buried him outside the church.

Ned, it was said, was a spoiled son, Over indulged and reckless, he drank too much, as was the fashion during his time (Prohibition). It might have been a relief, it has been suggested more than once, that Ned was gone. That way Lucy could have a decent life, good life, with a man who respected her. Which is what, apparently, she did. At least until the very end when she was old and frail, and dressed and waiting, for the Judgment Day.

-----
So we have been told that Sir Denis came to America in 1923 before going back to England to build first a munitions factory and later an economy car works with a retired American admiral on the American subsidiary board. We also are told that he lived on a street in Laurel Canyon named for the famous oilman whose family owned the entire area which became "Laurel Canyon".

See Chapter 11 of The Last Circle (http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/11.htm) for more on his relationship with Riconosciuto.

According to his Wiki entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Denis_Kendall) he was a fascist and was under MI5 and MI6 scrutiny because of his close pre-WWII connections to various Germans and membership of the BNP.

And then comes the stunning revelation. The company he formed was the Manufacturing and Research Company Ltd., which later changed its name to the British Manufacturing and Research Company Ltd.

Immediately after Thatcher lost power BMARC as it then become known, was investigated for illegal arms dealings with Iraq and with Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced MP and former Chairman of the fascist leaning "Le Cercle". During Thatcher's "reign" BMARC was sold to Astra, the arms company at the heart of the illegal arms to Iraq affair that became the subject of the Scott inquiry, by Lord Justice Scott.

This was a very big affair in the UK. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Thatcher government supplied weapons to Iraq and then later to Iran, so that both nations would kill each other. But it was worse than that. When the US and UK went to war with Saddam in 1991, the UK continued to provide weapons - in particular a 40 wagon trainload of 155 millimeter sabot discarding anti-tank shells as part of the (fig leaf end user agreement) "Jordan Package".

For a general background see the Wiki entry on BMARC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMARC#Financial_collapse).

See also Gerald James downloadable .pdf essay on this matter HERE (http://www.elc.org.uk/papers/2000James.doc)

Permindex was implicated in the financing of the 1962 Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) assassination attempt on French President Charles De Gaulle.[2][3] Guy Banister, in 1962, dispatched an associate, Maurice Brooks Gatlin - legal counsel of Banister's "Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean", to Paris to deliver a suitcase containing $200,000 for the OAS[4]. The source of the funds was the Bank Hapoalim owned by the Histadrut and they were channeled into Banque du Credit Internationale accounts maintained by Permindex. Canadian Louis Bloomfield was the head of Permindex, head of FBI Division Five and leading fund raiser for Histadrut in Canada.[5]

Following this investigation and accusations by the Italian Press that Permindex was a cover for CIA espionage in Italy the Italian government expelled Permindex in 1962 for subversive activities.[4][6].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permindex

The Gladio networks in continental Europe must have had high level, and highly compartmentalized, contact with certain individuals in both British & American intelligence.

From Linda's post:

Some say Mike was a casualty in a small war between two intelligence factions. On the one side is the Aquarius faction, clustered around MJ-12. It can be assumed that it is somehow tied to the rogue intelligence operations that emerged in the late 1970s called The Enterprise. The other faction , COM-12, is based in Naval Intelligence and is trying to keep intelligence work lawful.

Gunther Russbacher was a massive proponent of this theory of warring factions within the intelligence community, with the "Good" side essentially being based in ONI.

However, Russbacher was one of those spooky characters who seemed to delight in mixing up explosive revelations with some rank disinformation.

Dealing with Gunther was like wandering into the forest in search of Maeterlinck's Blue Bird of Happiness. Especially once his mind has been tampered with...

Magda Hassan

03-26-2009, 01:32 PM

Who was it claimed Crisman was one of the tramps in the photos taken of them in Dealy Plaza. I think I read it in the Torbitt document. Was supposed to have been with Beckham and Osbourne being the other two tramps. I don't think it true just trying to see how that story came to be.

Ron Williams

03-26-2009, 05:16 PM

Who was it claimed Crisman was one of the tramps in the photos taken of them in Dealy Plaza. I think I read it in the Torbitt document. Was supposed to have been with Beckham and Osbourne being the other two tramps. I don't think it true just trying to see how that story came to be.

Magda,

This would be a good area for much further discussion, especially regarding the Torbitt Document.

Below are two items I posted on the JFK Research Forum in 2008.

These two items are mentioned in the time-line too, right near the end.

Ron Williams

++++++++++

Fred Lee Crisman as a "Tramp" Candidate

I don’t know when photo analysts first started wondering if Fred Lee Crisman might be the “old tramp” but I will make a guess that it probably was one of the volunteers helping Jim Garrison and may have been Richard E. Sprague who at that time was accumulating his large collection of assassination photos. I have thought Sprague’s portrayal of Crisman in his book The Taking of America 1-2-3 is strange and I know some have looked on Sprague with some suspicion. For example, he was one of those that Vincent Salandria labeled an “agent” at one time…

On page 289 of A Farewell to Justice, Joan Mellen has:

Garrison was prevented from focusing effectively on …Fred Lee Crisman by inept investigative work. Richard E. Sprague insisted that Crisman, like Bradley, was one of the tramps arrested at Dealey Plaza…

In a footnote Mellen writes this was stated in a January 9, 1969, memo from Sprague to Fred Newcomb.

In The Taking of America 1-2-3, Richard Sprague doesn’t write that Crisman is the “old tramp” or that he appears in any of the tramp photos, he only writes that Crisman was a spotter for one of the shooter teams and that he “and the tall tramp followed Frenchy’s route into the boxcars.”

However the idea of Fred Lee Crisman as one of the tramps got started, it did result in a lot of confusion and time wasting…

+++++

Fred Lee Crisman in the Torbitt Document

Much confusion and the wasting of time has been the result of Fred Lee Crisman’s name appearing in the famous Torbitt Document (aka Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal) that surfaced as an unpublished manuscript and was circulated among Kennedy assassination researchers around 1970.

This mention of Crisman included some truth, some things that may be true, and some information that is wildly inaccurate. The author has Crisman all mixed up and confused with the shadowy Albert Alexander Osborne:

Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, was discovered to have another person working with him who also used the alias John Howard Bowen. The second person also traveling as Bowen was Fred Lee Crismon, another agent for the munitions makers police agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command. Crismon also posed as a missionary and also used other aliases. Among the cognomens for Crismon were Fred Lee, Jon Gould and Jon Gold.

Osborne and Crismon also bore a marked resemblance and appeared to be about the same age. Crismon was a Syrian immigrant and had been closely associated with Osborne since the 1920's.

Crismon, Osborne and their riflemen charges in Mexico were based at Clint Murchison's huge ranch when not posing as missionaries in other areas of Mexico. Murchison and J. Edgar Hoover were closer than twin brothers at Del Charro Hotel, adjacent to Murchison's horse race tracks at La Jolla, California over the ten years preceding the 1963 murder. Hoover, fraudulently charged over $40,000.00 of his personal bills at Del Charro to Del Hi-Taylor Oil Company, a Murchison corporation.*

The thing I find interesting about this entry is that the part about Crisman being a Syrian immigrant and being about the same age as Osborne misses the mark by a mile but at least one of the names Crisman used, Jon Gold, is accurate and was very current. As we now know, Crisman was born in Tacoma, Washington, and he was not Syrian and he was thirty-two years younger than Albert Osborne, but he did use the name “Dr. Jon Gold” for his talk radio show “The Round Table Forum” that ran on radio station KAYE in Puyallup, Washington, from August of 1968 to early in 1970. So whoever authored this part of “Torbitt” did have at least some accurate and very current information about the real Fred Lee Crisman.

And then of course we have the claim that wasted huge amounts time for HSCA investigators and still is causing confusion today, that of Crisman being one of the “Three Tramps” arrested and marched through Dealey Plaza and caught by news photographers shortly after the assassination. The HSCA investigators eventually established that Crisman was actually teaching school that day in Rainier, Oregon.

The chain of evidence connecting Albert Osborne, Fred Lee Crismon, alias John M. Bowen, Permindex, and his co-workers became iron clad when a Black Star photographer snapped a picture a few minutes after the assassination of Crismon, alias Bowen, and two of his charges in the process of being arrested by two young Dallas police officers at Dealey Plaza. Fritz later released all three. The Crismon, alias Bowen, arrest picture received limited public distribution in 1969 when it was published in the Midlothian Mirror by Penn Jones, the Texas editor.

[tramp photo image]

Co-Director of the Mexico based assassins, John H. Bowen, alias Fred Lee Crismon, alias Free Lee, alias Jon Gould, alias Jon Gold, and Thomas Beckam, front, and another assassin in the process of being arrested at Dealey Plaza immediately after the assassination.

One of Crismon's Mexican professionals, Manuel Gonzales, firing from the fence to Kennedy's right side struck the President in the right temple killing him instantly...

The last section that mentions Crisman contains a number of intriguing claims, some true, he did work for Boeing, he did use “church cover,” and he did do some work to help Gypsies; some false, the “Tramp” claims again; and some unknown or unclear, his being connected with DISC, and Garrison’s claims of him working for “the industrial warfare complex.”

Garrison; had traced DISC into its larger umbrella, Division Five of the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency supervised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Here is how Garrison's statement came about. On October 31, 1968, Jim Garrison subpoenaed a Tacoma, Washington man for questioning in his continuing investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Fred Lee Crismon, a "bishop" of the Universal Life Church, was called to appear before the Orleans Parish Grand Jury on November 21, 1968. Garrison's office said that Crismon "has been engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex for years. His cover is that of a 'preacher' and a 'person engaged in work to help the Gypsies.'"

Garrison's statement continued, "Our information indicates that since the early sixties, Crismon has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work. He is a 'former' employee of the Boeing Aircraft Company in the sense that one defendant in the case is a 'former' employee of the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Los Angeles. In intelligence terminology, this ordinarily means that the connection still exists, but that the 'former employee' has moved into an underground operation."

Garrison said that evidence has been developed indicating a relationship between Crismon and "persons involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Garrison further reiterated the general findings of his controversial investigation. "President Kennedy was murdered by elements of the industrial warfare complex working in concert with individuals in the United States Government. At the time of his murder, President Kennedy was working to end the Cold War.

The annual income of the defense industry was well over twenty billion dollars a year, and there were forces in that industry and in the U.S. Government which opposed the ending of the Cold War."

As has been pointed out earlier, Fred Lee Crismon used the alias John Howard Bowen and traveled and worked with the Mexico based assassins, Albert Osborne, Thomas Beckham and others. Bowen, alias Crismon, and Becham are shown in photographs taken November 22, 1963. In the picture on page 48, they are shown being taken after arrest by Dallas police across Dealey Plaza immediately after the President's murder.

Fred Lee Crismon, alias John H. Bowen, alias Dr. Jon Gold, and his partner, Thomas Edward Beckham, and Albert Osborne were all working for the Defense Industrial Security Command through the American Council of Christian Churches.

…Crismon, alias John H. Bowen, and Beckham played only small roles in the big picture, but not Jack Ruby and Ferenc Nagy. Jack Ruby, agent for DISC through the Mafia and Syndicate had to be in the basement of Dallas City Hall two days after the assassination to dispose of a dangerous witness.

Thank you for that Ron. Such a tricky area this JFK research business. Aliases, people sharing aliases, doubles, triples, stand ins, cut outs, false alibis, front companies, front churches. Holy smoke and mirrors!

Any ideas about the 'gypsies'? Given their designated role as untermenschen in the recent great ethnic cleansing of Europe I find it odd that they would be used as cover for Nazis and their associates in the US. Also, as a general rule Roma are quite wary (understandably) of dealing with state and church institutions and organisations.

Ron Williams

03-27-2009, 04:36 AM

...Any ideas about the 'gypsies'?...

This is an important question and one very much misunderstood in the bigger Crisman picture.

When Crisman moved back to his home town of Tacoma, Washington, in 1966, another old friend he got in touch with was Miller Stevens who was a Gypsy. What followed is a good case study of how Crisman operated, and I think there is much between the lines that one can speculate on.

According to the way Crisman explains it Miller Stevens asked for his help in getting an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) plan approved for the Gypsies. Here are a few quotes from Chapter 3 in Crisman's book Murder of a City:

Miller [Stevens] knew that I had been a school teacher and administrator and he was aware that I knew something about the Federal Aid to Education programs. He had contacted me to tell me that his people needed special help and that he could get no person to listen to his pleas. …I assumed that the Office of Economic Opportunity, in its great wisdom, had arranged to take care of the Gypsy peoples of this nation as well as they categorized the rest of the minority peoples. Negroes, Number 1, Indians, Number 2, Latin-Americans, Number 3…and so on down their ever wise and never wrong ladder! Miller insisted that the Gypsy peoples were being left out completely. I was again amazed… (p. 17)

[and here, I believe is a good example of the access in high places that Crisman had all over the country]

I called Jim Wickwire, in Senator Henry Jackson’s [D-Washington] office and Jim told me that he would check and see if Miller knew what he was talking about. …I soon had some letters from Jim Wickwire and several calls from him that expressed surprise that the all-knowing OEO had little knowledge or information on the Gypsy peoples as they now exist in the U.S. …I wrote a complete research paper on the Gypsy tribes in the U.S. with some notes on their way of life and their problems with public education… I finally wrote a complete education plan for the local Gypsy people and it was given a grudging $6700 to see if it could work. The program was a success, but was not renewed. (pp. 17-18)

Whether Crisman was motivated by altruism or friendship could be questioned, but what does seem clear is that he used this project as just another weapon in the local political war that (it appears) he had instigated and managed.

I walked away from the Gypsy project after having charged Miller not one penny for the long hours and research done for his favor. I was later accused by this same team Lee & Jeffords as having made a lot of money from the Gypsy program. By that time it did not worry me for I had been assured that most of the local politicians knew Lee as a liar and Jeffords as a cheap hippie-in-residence at the [Tacoma News] Tribune. Any knock from them was a boost in most quarters of the city. (p. 20)

For me, one of the most amazing things Micheal Riconosciuto said to Kenn Thomas in the 1996 prison interview was this: "Crisman was a master at emotional contagion. An absolute master at it…" (Maury Island UFO, p. 281)

Ron Williams

Ron Williams

03-27-2009, 08:49 AM

Checking to see what Peter Levenda has to say about Fred Lee Crisman is worthwhile. Some quotes:

FLYING SAUCER NEWS

On June 21, 1947—the summer solstice—six unidentified flying objects were seen over Maury Island in Puget Sound in the State of Washington. The observers were Harold A. Dahl, …his two crewman, his teenaged son and a dog…*

[Crisman was reported to have gone to the scene the next day]

This is a seminal event. No matter on what side of the Kennedy assassination one finds oneself… the Fred Crisman element strains credulity… More than twenty years after this event, Crisman will be subpoenaed by District Attorney Jim Garrison as a suspect in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy…

…June 24, 1947, the world changed.

This was the day of the famous sighting of nine UFOs north of Mount Rainer by Kenneth Arnold…

…One of the men involved in the investigation of UFO reports in the American Northwest that year was none other the FBI Agent Guy Banister… Guy Banister’s name is well-known among conspiracy aficionados as another one of the men implicated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison…

…Thus, the 1947 UFO sightings attracted two men—Crisman and Banister—who both would come under suspicion twenty years later for their supporting roles in the Kennedy assassination. The odds against this happening must be astronomical…

* - The whole story of the Maury Island UFO incident is confusing. Some believe (or want to believe) it was a real UFO sighting, others believe that it was simply a hoax, and others believe that it may have been an accident in the testing of some type of advanced aircraft. What is generally accepted is that Crisman and Harold Dahl were connected as friends, or business partners, (or something), and Dahl at some point referred to Crisman as his “superior.” Neither Dahl or Crisman were in anything called a “Harbor Patrol.” Dahl was in the lumber salvage business and had a boat that he used for “patrolling” Puget Sound for salvageable logs.

Ron Williams

David Guyatt

03-27-2009, 10:11 AM

Thanks for this Ron.

I am sure that Peter made a particular point to state that the date of the Maury Island sighting, on 21st June 1947, was the "summer solstice" because this date has significance to occultists, and so many of the connections Peter revealed in is excellent trilogy were of an occult nature.

Magda Hassan

03-27-2009, 11:22 AM

…Thus, the 1947 UFO sightings attracted two men—Crisman and Banister—who both would come under suspicion twenty years later for their supporting roles in the Kennedy assassination. The odds against this happening must be astronomical…

Indeed, it is beyond belief. But the odds are reduced to some thing more comprehensible if there are two operations of one kind or another in which Banister and Crisman have supporting roles.

Jan Klimkowski

03-27-2009, 08:25 PM

...Any ideas about the 'gypsies'?...

This is an important question and one very much misunderstood in the bigger Crisman picture.

When Crisman moved back to his home town of Tacoma, Washington, in 1966, another old friend he got in touch with was Miller Stevens who was a Gypsy. What followed is a good case study of how Crisman operated, and I think there is much between the lines that one can speculate on.

According to the way Crisman explains it Miller Stevens asked for his help in getting an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) plan approved for the Gypsies. Here are a few quotes from Chapter 3 in Crisman's book Murder of a City:

Miller [Stevens] knew that I had been a school teacher and administrator and he was aware that I knew something about the Federal Aid to Education programs. He had contacted me to tell me that his people needed special help and that he could get no person to listen to his pleas. …I assumed that the Office of Economic Opportunity, in its great wisdom, had arranged to take care of the Gypsy peoples of this nation as well as they categorized the rest of the minority peoples. Negroes, Number 1, Indians, Number 2, Latin-Americans, Number 3…and so on down their ever wise and never wrong ladder! Miller insisted that the Gypsy peoples were being left out completely. I was again amazed… (p. 17)

Yes!

The scam Crisman is pulling here - Federal funding for a "minority" project but using it as cover for covert operations - is exactly the same scam pulled on the Cabazon reservation a few dozen years later.

The greatest argument Michael Riconosciuto had with his wife Bobbie, was over whether or not Riconosciuto should testify before Congress, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court and a Federal Grand Jury. Bobbie told Riconosciuto that his testimony would destroy their life, and she was right.

WHO IS RICONOCUITO?

Riconosciuto was the computer expert for the Central Intelligence Agency, he was their Einstein. There was nothing he couldn't do with a computer – for good or for bad. But Riconosciuto had many secrets and he began to see the ruthlessness of his colleagues. Riconosciuto decided to testify about massive corruption in the U.S. Justice Department and the intelligence agency. He agreed to provide his insider knowledge to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee investigating the INSLAW affair. He also gave his testimony to a Federal Bankruptcy Court which ruled that the Justice Department was deceitful, stole a $6 million software package. The INSLAW case was considered by members of Congress and the Federal Bankruptcy Judge to be "dirtier than Watergate". In fact, the Judge was removed from the bench after 14 years because of his ruling against the Justice Department.

Riconosciuto, in providing his testimony, warned Congress and the Courts that he had been threatened should he testify he would be arrested and his wife would lose a custody battle involving her children by a former marriage. The threats were carried in the Washington Times, St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Napa Sentinel. Within a week of Riconosciuto's testimony he was arrested by Federal Agents. Even while under arrest, he was subpoenaed to testify before a U.S. Federal Grand Jury seated to hear the INSLAW case. On Thursday, November 12, Riconosciuto made a declaration to the court. After the declaration was filed his wife, Bobbie, was arrested – in Napa. Bobbie was arrested on a Washington warrant, charged with custodial interference. The warrant was three years old and it actually may be invalid inasmuch as Bobbie was never subpoenaed to appear before a custody suit after a temporary order giving custody of their children to the father was overturned years ago. When Bobbie was arraigned on Friday, heavy security was on hand and everyone was subject to electronic and personal search, a very unusual step associated with such a minor charge. She was being held without bail. Bail was finally set at $50,000. Bobbie had just delivered a letter to the Sentinel addressed to Congressman Jack Brooks and then a few minutes later she was arrested. Her arrest sparked interest with several national radio talk shows and some national media.

The federal agent who arrested Riconosciuto after his Congressional declaration is the same agent who called the Napa County District Attorney's Office to have Bobbie arrested. The children voluntarily left with their father yesterday, but they indicated they felt it was only temporary.

After Riconosciuto's arrest, Bobbie went into hiding – she and her family had been threatened and their home broken into. Both Bobbie and Riconosiuito felt that the children were as much in danger as they were. Riconosciuto possessed the knowledge that could destroy powerful forces in and out of Washington. In an August 1992 report from the Brooks Committee in Congress, Riconosciuto is given high credibility for his testimony. The Congress, after reviewing the entire INSLAW case for nearly two years, asked for a Special Prosecutor. The Congressional report also was critical of the Justice Department's cover-ups, missing records and total lack of cooperation with Congressional requests and subpoenas.

HIS FIRST TESTIMONY

On March 21, 1992, Riconosciuto stated in an affidavit to the Court and Congress – and before he was arrested – the following:

During the 1980s he served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians of Indio, California. The joint venture was located on the Cabazon reservation.

The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture sought to develop and/or manufacture certain materials that are used in military and national security operations, including night vision goggles, machine guns, fuel-air explosives, and biological and chemical warfare weapons.

The Cabazon Band of Indians are a sovereign nation. The sovereign immunity that is accorded the Cabazons as a consequence of this fact made it feasible to pursue on the reservation the development and/or manufacture of materials whose development or manufacture would be subject to stringent controls off the reservation. As a minority group, the Cabazon Indians also provided the Wackenhut Corporation with an enhanced ability to obtain federal contracts through the 8A Set Aside Program, and in connection with Government-owned contractor-operated (GOCO) facilities.

The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture was intended to support the needs of a number of foreign governments and forces, including forces and governments in Central America and the Middle East. The Contras in Nicaragua represented one of the most important priorities for the joint venture.

The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture maintained close liaison with certain elements of the United States Government, including representatives of intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies.

Among the frequent visitors to the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture were Peter Videnieks of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and a close associate of Videnieks by the name of Earl W. Brian. Brian is a private businessman who lives in Maryland and who has maintained close business ties with the U.S. intelligence community for many years.

In connection with my work for Wackenhut, I engaged in some software development and modification work in 1983 and 1984 on the proprietary PROMIS computer software product. The copy of PROMIS on which I worked came from the U.S. Department of Justice. Earl W. Brian made it available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the PROMIS software. I performed the modifications to PROMIS in Indio, California, Silver Spring, Maryland, and Miami, Florida.

The purpose of the PROMIS software modification that I made in 1983 and 1984 was to support a plan for the implementation of PROMIS in law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Earl W. Brian was spearheading the plan for this worldwide use of the PROMIS computer software.

Some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Earl W. Brian would check with me from time to time to make certain that the work would be completed in time to satisfy the schedule for the RCMP and CSIS implementations of PROMIS.

The propriety version of PROMIS, as modified by me, was, in fact implemented in both the RCMP and the CSIS in Canada. It was my understanding that Earl W. Brian had sold this version of PROMIS to the Government of Canada.

In February 1991, I had a telephone conversation with Peter Videnieks, then still employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Videnieks attempted during this telephone conversation to persuade me not to cooperate with an independent investigation of the government's piracy of INSLAW's proprietary PROMIS software being conducted by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Videnieks stated that I would be rewarded for a decision not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation. Videnieks forecasted an immediate and favorable resolution of a protracted child custody dispute being prosecuted against my wife by her former husband, if I were to decide not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation.

Videnieks also outlined specific punishments that I could expect to receive from the U.S. Department of Justice if I cooperated with the House Judiciary Committee's investigation.

One punishment that Videnieks outlined was the future inclusion of me and my father in a criminal prosecution of certain business associates of mine in Orange County, California, in connection with the operation of a savings and loan institution in Orange County. By way of underscoring his power to influence such decisions at the U.S. Department of Justice, Videnieks informed me of the indictment of these business associates prior to the time when that indictment was unsealed and made public.

Another punishment that Videnieks threatened against me if I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee is prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice for perjury. Videnieks warned me that credible witnesses would come forward to contradict any damaging claims that I made in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and that I would subsequently be prosecuted for perjury by the U.S Department of Justice for my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

THREATS FULFILLED

Videnieks alleged threats came true – Riconosciuto was arrested, and Bobbie's former husband was given favorable treatment in the courts in her absence.

Bobbie's arrest was timely. Her husband filed a declaration with the Federal Grand Jury in Chicago in compliance with a subpoena to testify. He told the Grand Jury that he needed two customized DEC VAX 11-730 computers with the customized operating system media. This is equipment seized by the U.S. Government when Riconosciuto was arrested. The declaration of Riconosciuto was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division (case No. 92 C 6217, Michael J. Riconosciuto, et al., Plaintiffs vs. Nicholas Bua, et al., Defendants.)

GRAND JURY STATEMENT

Riconosciuto told the Grand Jury that with the equipment he could produce information about various operations which developed extremely sensitive military applications from highly advanced technology, such as:

Electrostatic heat transfer, modified to enable ordinary and readily available electronic parts and hardware to transform ordinary and readily available explosives into devices capable of destruction of nuclear dimension.

Biotechnological weapons, including, but not limited to, lethal monoclonal antibodies which are gene specific, e.g., able to distinguish between specific racial characteristics and cause painful, disastrous, lethal effects for only those individuals exposed to such antibodies whose cell structure contains the target genes.

Compact high voltage power supplies, intended to be used in various hi-tech weapons systems and development.

Advanced communications systems, e.g., spread spectrum data compression, which would enable current microwave transmissions to be 100 times more efficient and, under appropriate development, 100 times more deadly.

Advanced infrared sensor technology, used in night vision goggles, missile surveillance and tracking, and in more sinister applications, saturation surveillance of all movements of all people in every open, visible space on the entire planet.

Thermal imaging, enabling surveillance through fog.

Bragg cell technology.

MILITARY CONTRACTS

Riconosciuto also told the Grand Jury the computer can prove that he worked on the following military contracts:

Beacon technology.

Threat emitter technology, which would enable the transmission of false images on radar scopes, e.g., airplanes could be made to appear to be birds, or vice versa.

He also told the Grand Jury that the computer would prove the duplicity and treasonous activity of certain officials of the Wackenhut Corporation, such as:

Double-billing by Wackenhut officials on U.S. Army contracts at the Yuma, Arizona test site, during 1982 and 1983.

The misappropriation or theft of highly advanced and lucrative technological developments during the period from 1980 to 1991.

The brokering and facilitation of the transfer of embargoed technology to listed countries (i.e., countries prohibited from receiving embargoed technology – enemies of the people of the United States):
(a) Wackenhut would facilitate and broker said embargoed technology to countries, such as Chile, Brazil and Argentina, using military test sites as demonstration facilities.

(b) Officials of said countries would then, with full knowledge of Wackenhut officials, transfer said embargoed technology to countries such as Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, the Peoples' Republic of China, South Africa and Israel.

Riconosciuto further stated that the computer would prove the duplicity and treasonous activity of certain officials of First Intercontinental Development Company, a corporation cut-out (i.e., secret negotiating agent) for treasonous deals made through the White House, similar to the deals made through Wackenhut. He stated that one such deal was made with Iraq.

Prior to Operation Desert Shield, the Iraqis obtained the latest fibre-optic command and control capability which enable them to have jam-resistant links from their military command center to the forward battle areas; possession by the Iraqis of said capability required an accelerated manufacturing program of building 4000 pound bombs to eliminate said capability.

The Iraqis had also obtained the latest radio-jamming technology, which enable them to interdict communications of the allied forces; had the Iraqis not showed their hand during Operation Desert Shield, they would have been able to undermine critical communications during the first days of Operation Desert Storm, potentially causing a major military setback for the allied forces with the resultant loss of life and demoralization.

Riconosciuto testified that he was doing business with Thomsen CSF (a French conglomerate which developed the Exocet Missile), International Signals, Eaton Corporation, the Santa Barbara Research Division of Hughes Corporation, Dorn-Margolin, Texas Instruments, General Dynamics, Northrop, Kures-Alterman, E-Systems and Reynolds Capacitor.

CIA MONEY LAUNDERING

With Riconosciuto's credentials acclaimed by Congress and the Grand Jury, he further stated that he facilitated the laundering of CIA funds via his expertise in manipulating electronic data transmission equipment. This included the transfer of funds which were involved in the October Surprise payment to the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran. He said he was also responsible for the manner in which caused the interdiction of funds from the sale of Red Chinese gold and the manner in which large sums of CIA funds were secreted and knowledge of where those funds are located.

"The information available on my computer equipment would also tend to prove and show that the above described treasonous deals are related to the ongoing international scandals involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and that crucial features of said deals are centered in Chicago and involve the courts and prosecutors in Chicago," he stated.

THEN SHE WAS ARRESTED

After this explosive declaration was made public in the courts, Bobbie was arrested in Napa, where she has been for about ten months. Her children were registered in local schools and she was living in American Canyon at the time. Bobbie is still in jail awaiting an extradition hearing.

The Napa Valley Register ran an article on Friday indicating that a Roberta Peterson was arrested for custodial interference and that her husband was a federal prisoner. Little did the public in Napa know the impact and national repercussions. Congressman Jack Brooks was notified. Neither the District Attorney's Office, Napa Police Department nor the Child Protective Services have knowledge of who Bobbie Riconosciuto (Peterson) is. Things like this never usually touch Napa – but they did Thursday.

The arrest of Bobbie on the eve of Riconosciuto's testimony to a Federal Grand Jury probing corruption in the U.S. Government may not be a mere coincidence.

"The information available on my computer equipment would also tend to prove and show that the above described treasonous deals are related to the ongoing international scandals involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and that crucial features of said deals are centered in Chicago and involve the courts and prosecutors in Chicago," he stated.

In regard to the BNL affair, rather than post in this thread I have started a new one called "Treasurygate" that very much relates to Riconsciuto's story, I think:

...By the end of 1945, Amazing Stories was selling 250,000 copies per month, an amazing circulation for a science fiction pulp magazine. Palmer sat up late at night, rewriting Shaver's material and writing other short stories about the Deros under pseudonyms. Thousands of letters poured into the office. Many of them offered supporting "evidence" for the Shaver stories, describing strange objects they had seen in the sky and strange encounters they had had with alien beings. It seemed that many thousands of people were aware of the existence of some distinctly nonterrestrial group in our midst. Paranoid fantasies were mixed with tales that had the uncomfortable ring of truth. The "Letters-to-the-Editor" section was the most interesting part of the publication. Here is a typical contribution from the issue for June 1946:

Sirs:
I flew my last combat mission on May 26, [1945] when I was shot up over Bassein and ditched my ship in Ramaree Roads off Chedubs Island. I was missing five days. I requested leave at Kashmere (sic). I and Capt. (deleted by request) left Srinagar and went to Rudok then through the Khese pass to the northern foothills of the Karakoram. We found what we were looking for. We knew what we were searching for.

For heaven's sake, drop the whole thing! You are playing with dynamite. My companion and I fought our way out of a cave with submachine guns. I have two 9" scars on my left arm that came from wounds given me in the cave when I was 50 feet from a moving object of any kind and in perfect silence. The muscles were nearly ripped out. How? I don't know. My friend has a hole the size of a dime in his right bicep. It was seared inside. How we don't know. But we both believe we know more about the Shaver Mystery than any other pair.

You can imagine my fright when I picked up my first copy of Amazing Stories and see you splashing words about on the subject.

The identity of the author of this letter was withheld by request. Later Palmer revealed his name: Fred Lee Crisman. He had inadvertently described the effects of a laser beam -- even though the laser wasn't invented until years later. Apparently Crisman was obsessed with Deros and death rays long before Kenneth Arnold sighted the "first" UFO in June 1947....

Linda Minor

04-16-2009, 03:15 AM

The "Letters-to-the-Editor" section was the most interesting part of the publication. Here is a typical contribution from the issue for June 1946:

Sirs:
I flew my last combat mission on May 26, [1945] when I was shot up over Bassein and ditched my ship in Ramaree Roads off Chedubs Island. I was missing five days. I requested leave at Kashmere (sic). I and Capt. (deleted by request) left Srinagar and went to Rudok then through the Khese pass to the northern foothills of the Karakoram. We found what we were looking for. We knew what we were searching for.

For heaven's sake, drop the whole thing! You are playing with dynamite. My companion and I fought our way out of a cave with submachine guns. I have two 9" scars on my left arm that came from wounds given me in the cave when I was 50 feet from a moving object of any kind and in perfect silence. The muscles were nearly ripped out. How? I don't know. My friend has a hole the size of a dime in his right bicep. It was seared inside. How we don't know. But we both believe we know more about the Shaver Mystery than any other pair.

You can imagine my fright when I picked up my first copy of Amazing Stories and see you splashing words about on the subject.

The identity of the author of this letter was withheld by request. Later Palmer revealed his name: Fred Lee Crisman. ...

http://www.scifi-fantasy-info.com/richard-sharpe-shaver.html

...These Dero still lived in the cave cities, according to Richard Sharpe Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture, and using the fantastic "ray" machines that the great ancient races left behind to project tormenting thoughts and voices into our minds. Dero could be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor "accidental" injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Women especially were singled out for brutal treatment, including rape, and Mike Dash notes that "Sado-masochism was one of the prominent themes of Shaver's writings." Though generally confined to their caves, Richard Sharpe Shaver claimed that the Deros sometimes traveled by spaceships or rockets, and had dealings with equally evil extraterrestrial beings. Shaver claimed first-hand knowledge of the Dero and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years.

Palmer edited and rewrote the manuscript, increasing the total word count to a novella length 31,000. Palmer insisted that he did nothing to alter the core elements of Richard Sharpe Shaver's story, but that he only added an exciting plot line so the story would not read "like a dull recitation." Retitled "I Remember Lemuria!"; it was published in March, 1945 issue of Amazing. The issue sold out, and generated quite a response: between 1945 and 1949, letters poured in attesting to the truth of Richard Sharpe Shaver's claims (tens of thousands of letters, according to Palmer). The correspondents, too, had heard strange voices or encountered denizens of the hollow Earth.

One of the letters to Amazing was from a woman who claimed to have gone into a deep subbasement of a Paris, France building via a secret elevator. After months of rape and other torture, the woman was freed by a group of Teros. Another letter claiming involvement with Deros came from Fred Crisman, later to gain notoriety for his role in the Maury Island Incident and the John F. Kennedy Assassination....

Linda Minor

04-16-2009, 03:45 AM

http://efanzines.com/EK/eI41/index.htm

Fred Lee Crisman

One could say that if all it takes is for someone to write about something to make it happen, Buck Rogers can be blamed for flying saucers. He predated The Shaver Mystery. What really turned Rap into the world’s first flying saucer investigator was one Fred L. Crisman of Tacoma, Washington, not Richard S. Shaver.

Nowadays, Crisman is generally deemed a trickster by trade, and a truly shady character. The two things we positively know about him is that he was born in 1919 and died in 1975. Conspiracy buffs and ufologists alike have been trying to unravel his secrets for years. Just Google Crisman’s name and it will spew a bizarre thread that begins with Ray Palmer and the Shaver Mystery.

Crisman is believed by some to have been an OSS and CIA agent, an industrial spy, closely aligned with right-wing extremists, underworld figures, and anti-Castro Cubans who were allegedly involved in the JFK assassination. In 1968 Crisman worked as a right wing “shock jock” hosting a radio talk show in Tacoma. He was subpoenaed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison during a 1968 investigation into the Kennedy assassination. It has been rumored (even Keel mentioned this) that Crisman was one of the three “tramps” arrested in Dealey Plaza after the murder.

It is also written that during WW II, Crisman came up with a plan to forestall the Nazis’ completion of their atom bomb. He came up with a non-functional “widget,” that was dropped by Allied bombers across Germany as the war ground to its grisly finale. While German scientists wasted valuable time trying to figure out what the widgets were about, we whomped their asses and dropped the A-Bomb on Japan. So the story goes.

Crismanologists all agree that Crisman’s post-war existence was first noted in a published letter in the June 1946 issue of Amazing Stories. At first glance it appeared to be a fantastic corroboration of The Shaver Mystery, detailing the gory details of a dero attack on then Army pilot Crisman and an unnamed captain near Tibet. Wrote Crisman…

“For heaven’s sake, drop the whole thing! [The Shaver Mystery]. My companion and I fought our way out of a cave with sub-machine guns. I have two nine-inch scars on my left arm that came from wounds given me in the cave when I was 50 feet from a moving object of any kind….

“You can imagine my fright when I picked up my first copy of Amazing Stories and see you splashing words about on the subject.”

Anti-Shaverites zeroed in on the letter. Though it appeared to be a validation of Shaver’s claims, critics saw it as one more proof that Rap and his wild-eyed readers were a bunch of nut balls. Years later, Rap said he was actually skeptical of the letter.

“…According to Life magazine, this publisher wanted everybody to believe that the Shaver Mystery was true, and here was some provident proof. But he did nothing, because he didn’t believe a word of Crisman’s letter,” said Rap. 19

There was a follow-up letter from Crisman, too, appearing in the May 1947 issue. Soon after the appearance of the first letter, Harpers magazine published a denunciation of Rap and the Shaver Mystery. The author, S. Baring-Gould, touted Crisman’s letter as an example of the crackpots Rap catered to. Then Crisman himself chimed in!

“I bitterly resent this,” snorted Crisman about the article. “I felt that you too, Mr. Palmer, had more or less given me up for a jerk who was only trying to pull your leg…that maybe all this was only a promotion stunt….”

Whatever Crisman’s motives, one thing is clear; Crisman had already targeted Ray Palmer as part of a grand scheme. What the purpose of this scheme was, not even conspiriologists admit to knowing for sure, though they have their theories. One thing we know for certain is that one month after the appearance of Crisman’s second letter, Ray Palmer got sucked into a black hole that pulled him into an even stranger universe than the Shaver Mystery. This is where his reputation as the world’s first flying saucer investigator really begins.

The Tacoma Incident

We wonder how many of you readers know that at one time Project Blue Book…named your editor as the ‘hoaxer’ who started this whole flying saucer thing? —Rap

Martin Gardner in his book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science brushes off the Tacoma Incident, aka the Maury Island Mystery, like it was lint on his collar:

“The entire Maury Island episode later proved to be a hoax elaborately planned by two Tacoma men who hoped to sell the phony yarn to an adventure magazine. Both men eventually made a full confession.” End of story. 20

The key word here is “elaborately,” because Crisman was definitely a pro. Elaborately means he reserved a hotel room for his victim before the victim arrived. Crisman also secured an empty house to set up a phony “secretary” who lived there and “worked on the books” for his phony log-salvaging company. This was a lot of work just to sell a penny-a-word pulp yarn to some adventure magazine; but hey, strange things happen. In any case, let the tale begin.

On June 21, 1947, three days before airplane pilot Kenneth Arnold spied a formation of nine bright objects “skipping like rocks” across water, a very strange event was unfolding near Tacoma, Washington. Featuring all the key elements of future flying saucer lore, it had intrigue, a bugged hotel room, inquisitive newspaper reporters, tragic deaths, Military Intelligence officers, potential Cold War spies, weird saucer debris that was somehow “switched” with phony metal slag, unannounced visits by government secret service agents, and an after-hours burglary of saucer evidence, sinister warnings over the phone, and finally the disappearance of the two men who started the whole thing. Again, in the hope of getting to bed before 3 AM, this has to be a Readers Digest version.

One very special day on Puget Sound harbor near a place called Maury Island, a logger, Harold Dahl by name, his teenage son, the family dog, and two crew members were patrolling for salvage logs in a war surplus mine sweeper, when they witnessed six huge doughnut-shaped craft in the sky.

They estimated the objects, which had a bright metallic sheen, to be about 100 feet in diameter. Five of the things circled a sixth one, which acted differently than the rest, as if it was having some kind of mechanical malfunction.

The crew was then spooked by a loud concussion from the distressed ship, which suddenly discharged vast quantities of metallic “stuff” resembling shreds of aluminum foil and newspaper interspersed with heavier “stuff” like lava rock. All this came raining down on the crew, much to their dismay. The dog was killed by a large piece of the falling debris, and Dahl’s son suffered a severe burn to his arm. The boat’s cabin was significantly damaged.

In the midst of all this chaos, one of the hovering doughnuts approached the sickly, spewing doughnut and somehow “rejuvenated” it, at which point all disks quickly rose into the sky and vanished.

Dahl, on returning home, gave a report to his “boss” Fred L. Crisman. Yes, the very same Fred L. Crisman who sent the letters to Rap a year earlier. He was now in charge of a log salvaging operation in Tacoma Washington! Small world. Or was it a large conspiracy?

Back in Chicago, Rap sat at his desk pondering newspaper reports of Kenneth Arnold’s “flying saucer” sighting near Mt. Rainier. It was June 1947, the same month Rap published Amazing’s highly anticipated all-Shaver Mystery issue.

Then, as was the pattern in Rap’s charmed life, “it” happened. He got a phone call from Tacoma, Washington. Fred L. Crisman was calling. He told Rap that he was ready to hand over the greatest story since, well, never.

At this point we can only ponder why Rap would even consider Crisman’s story if he suspected those previous letters were a hoax, though Rap’s son explains it thusly:

“Ray Palmer [was] a skeptic, but he was not the type of skeptic that would laugh at you and then change your story to make you look foolish,” he said. “He would listen and get as much information as he could and then try to find out how your story is true. Sometimes you find out and sometimes you don’t, but either way you learn more.”

We only ask that you suspend disbelief awhile longer, as Rap did; otherwise the rest of this tale would not have happened.

Rap went right to his typewriter and hammered out a letter to Kenneth Arnold, pleading with him to get in his plane and head to Tacoma to investigate Crisman’s story. He offered him $200, but it took a second letter with even more pleas from Rap, before the world’s most celebrated pilot since Charles Lindberg conceded.

Ken Arnold’s first clue that he was not in control of his situation came when he discovered he had a room already reserved at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma. Neither he nor Rap made the arrangements. “Ah, yes,” the desk clerk said to Arnold over the phone, “We have Room 502 reserved in your name!” Maybe it was a different Kenneth Arnold, he thought, since no one other than Rap and Arnold’s family knew he was flying to Tacoma. Oh well, whatever. He took the room.

In due time, Arnold contacted Harold Dahl, who arrived at Room 502 to tell the strange tale of saucer debris, a dead dog, danger, and incredulity. Dahl was full of angst, and seemed reticent to tell the story, warning Arnold that he should just forget the whole thing and fly home.

Next day at 9:30 AM, Fred L. Crisman was banging on the door of Room 502. Arnold described him as a “short, stocky fellow, dark complexioned, a happy-go-lucky appearing person…and extremely alert.” 21 After Crisman’s grand entrance, Dahl faded into the woodwork, spending much of the rest of this story at a local movie theater watching episodes of The Crimson Ghost.

Crisman confirmed Dahl’s story to Arnold and added even more. He said he went to retrieve some of the saucer debris at Maury Island. While there, he too saw one of the doughnut-shaped craft circling the area, and there was no doubt about it, he knew what he saw.

“I hold a commercial pilot’s license,” Crisman informed Arnold. “I flew over a hundred missions in fighter aircraft over Burma in the last war and I feel qualified to describe it accurately.” 22

Arnold, feeling overwhelmed by all the details Crisman was firing at him, called an old friend and commercial pilot, Captain E.J. Smith, for backup. Smith arrived the next day, and heard more of the same from the two “loggers.” Nonetheless, Arnold began to feel uneasy about the two men.

“We both had a peculiar feeling that we were being watched or that there was something dangerous about getting involved with Crisman and Dahl,” he later wrote in The Coming of the Saucers. 23

Smith and Arnold suspected a hoax, or even that Russian espionage was at play. Cold War jitters being what they were, everyone believed it was a good bet the saucers were Soviet secret weapons taken from the Nazis.

Arnold’s paranoia edged a notch further when he got a phone call from an United Press reporter named Ted Morello, who informed him that, “Some crackpot has been phoning us here, telling us verbatim what has been going on in your hotel room for the last day.” 23 Naturally, Crisman and Dahl were the prime suspects, but when both men were present in the hotel room when Morello called again, confirming what had just transpired in the room, Arnold and Smith were dumbfounded. Who was it? How was the information getting out, and to what end?

After a thorough search of the room, Rap’s two saucer investigators were unable to locate the bug they knew must reside in Room 502. Finally, with growing concern for his safety, Arnold called in Military Intelligence.

Within hours, Air Force First Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William L. Davidson arrived from Hamilton AFB in California. After interviewing all concerned, Crisman nearly forced a cardboard box full of the so-called saucer debris on the two officers, which was then loaded onto their B-25 bomber.

Talk of sabotage hit the Washington papers next morning when news that the plane’s left engine had caught fire, and the safety extinguisher failed to operate. Brown and Davidson died when they crashed near Kelso, Washington. The saucer debris was never found in the wreckage. Mysteriously, Crisman and Dahl were never prosecuted for promoting what they later confessed (“allegedly” confessed, say conspiriologists) to FBI agents was a complete hoax that indirectly led to the loss of a newly refurbished B-25 bomber. AF officials said they had traced Crisman’s saucer debris to a Tacoma smelter.

Back in Room 502, Arnold was totally freaked and wanted out. He called Rap and briefed him on the situation. Rap told him to get on his plane and bail.

“He told me to keep the money and…not to carry any of the fragments aboard my plane. He advised me to prevent Smith from taking any fragments. He didn’t tell me why, but I felt the advice was good. Mr. Palmer told me not to become too upset and then I gave the phone to Crisman.” 25

Crisman talked briefly with Rap confirming the plane crash. Arnold claimed later that “Raymond Palmer told me that he recognized Crisman’s voice. He was positive that it was the same voice that had called him long distance on other occasions from various parts of the country. Brother, what a mess.” 26

A witness was said to have spotted Crisman boarding an Army Air Corps plane, destination—Alaska. Dahl simply vanished. Back in Chicago, Rap was left holding the bag. He was now being blamed for perpetrating the greatest hoax since the Shaver Mystery. The new round of criticism only made him dig in his heels. He was convinced something very strange was going on. If the whole thing was a hoax, he wondered why his samples of the so-called smelter slag were stolen from his Ziff-Davis office one night after a visit from an intelligence agent? The agent, he said, was asking questions about the Shaver Mystery.

It was pretty clear that Rap was going to take the hit for Maury Island, and when Edward J. Ruppelt, former head the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, published his “Report on Unidentified Flying Objects” in 1956, Rap endured further public humiliation when Ruppelt declared:

“[Crisman and Dahl] admitted that the rock fragments had nothing to do with flying saucers. They had sent in the rock fragments [to Palmer] as a joke…and said the rock came from a flying saucer because that’s what [Ray Palmer] wanted him to say.” 27

Rap was pissed. “If the Maury Island Incident was a hoax, there is basis to lay it at the door of Fred L. Crisman” he sputtered.

But it moved Rap’s name to the top of the government’s list of “people to keep an eye on,” as Palmer’s son explained to this writer.

“There was a joke at the shop that the way to identify a G-man was to look at his shoes; so whenever one would come we would all lean over and look at the shoes. They came to look at our rocket launching base and radar (which we didn’t have); they came to audit his taxes; they came as postal inspectors and spent three days here only to give him back about 38¢ that was overpaid (but they did look at every name on the mailing list). They planted a false story in the news and all the authorities came down on him only to have them mysteriously leave and never explain to the news why they left with nothing being done.”

Yet, Rap continued his investigating, as well as his crusade against injustice. He also came up with a new slant to his beloved science fiction.

The Coming of the Saucers

The cover of the issue of Amazing Stories that was cancelled.

“We are adding a kind of science fiction … that deals with the new kind of space ship. After all, it’s just not modern to talk of spaceships these days, or of Bob Crosby; but of flying saucers and Elvis Presley!” –Rap

Rap revealed years later that prior to the Tacoma Incident, he was about to release new “evidence” concerning the saucers and much more in a special Amazing Stories flying saucers issue, but never got the chance, thanks to a visit from a Federal agent.

“The Tacoma incident intervened,” he grouched. “The owner of the magazine ordered the special issue halted, killed the Shaver Mystery, and tossed aside a bit of business that had netted him a half million dollars in four years—all the day after a man with a gold badge paid him a visit.” 28

Yes, the Tacoma affair did little to endear Rap to Ziff-Davis. So, in 1949, two years after Maury Island, Kenneth Arnold and Room 502, Rap left Amazing Stories to strike out on his own as an independent publisher. In fact, he started his new career on the sly even before he left Amazing. He founded an sf pulp—Other Worlds Science Stories—and he gambled on Fate magazine, a mystical digest that Rap bet would fill a niche in the publishing field. He was right. Fate struck a chord with a new readership, while newsstand sales for science fiction slowly dried up. TV and the newly emerging paperback houses were blamed.

Rap tried valiantly to drum up interest in his science fiction ’zines with a dizzying array of title and format changes. From October 1953 to April ’54, Other Worlds suddenly became Science Stories. Also in ’53, Rap founded Universe Science Fiction, ran it for ten issues, then changed the name to Other Worlds Science Stories, giving it a larger format in the hopes of making it more noticeable on newsstands; all to no avail.

Meanwhile, Rap’s obsession with flying saucers was growing. His magazine cover art blatantly mirrored this preoccupation. His saucer files were growing almost as fast as his personal file at FBI headquarters. After all, the Feds had concluded in 1947 that Palmer and Shaver were indeed behind flying saucer “hysteria.” The Tacoma Incident further expanded Palmer’s burgeoning file.

Then Rap had a brainstorm. He decided to change Other Worlds Science Stories into Flying Saucers from Other Worlds, filling it with a combination of saucer fiction yarns and factual reports. It was the beginning of his transition from science fiction to saucer and “spiritual” publications, what now is termed “New Age.” For a time, he alternated thetwo zines. One month it was Flying Saucers from Other Worlds, the next it was Other Worlds Science Stories. By this time Rap had accumulated several file cabinets full of saucer documentation. Why not put it to good use? As he often did when he came up with a new idea, he hinted that something extraordinary was about to happen … in the next issue, of course.

“Today we are living the science fiction of yesterday, and now something new is being added —we are living tomorrow’s science fiction too…ahead of time! We have that unexplainable feeling we always get when something big is about to break. We were ‘in on’ the flying saucer mystery before it broke.” 29

What with his shabby treatment after Maury Island, this new plan gave him the perfect soapbox from which to harangue Officialdom and pound the media, and other pundits did not take the subject seriously. In the first issue of Flying Saucers from Other Worlds, Rap angrily struck out at so-called journalists in May of 1957.

“When flying saucers first appeared, no writer had the gumption to sit down and state it was a plain news item. No, they had to make a huge joke out of it…Your editor has a word for that kind of writer, and it’s spelled ‘tramp.’ They ride the fourth estate rails free…Laughing jackasses, the whole lot of them.”

Apparently, only Rap acknowledged his vast contribution to ufology. The ghost of Tacoma still haunted him. He was being snubbed even by Flying saucer organizations like NICAP, who refused to acknowledge his work. Rap concluded NICAP was simply a “mouthpiece for the CIA” in one of his many searing editorials:

“…In spite of the fact that this editor is not only the first flying saucer investigator, but the possessor of the largest private file of saucer information in the world, and the publisher of the only newsstand magazine on flying saucers, and has repeatedly offered to help NICAP, this help being refused.” 30

John A. Keel remained unrepentant of his criticism of Rap’s ufological contribution, as revealed in a 1984 letter to Shavertron, a fanzine dedicated to the Shaver Mystery. Keel was bemoaning an apparent lack of interest in flying saucers at that time, making it more difficult to sell saucer-related material.

“Palmer created and sustained the field of ufology, and modeled it after science fiction fandom,” chided Keel. “If Palmer had not existed, it is very likely that widespread interest in flying saucers would have faded away after 1947. After his death in 1977, ufology and the subject of UFOs has slipped into total limbo…

“Because only a few copies of Amazing Stories from the 1940s remain intact, very few advocates of the Shaver Mystery have had a chance to study them. So the Shaver Mystery itself is now founded on hearsay and myth.

“Keep up the bad work,
“John A. Keel.”

And what of the man who, with one crazy episode, turned Rap into the world’s first flying saucer investigator? As conspiracy history tells us, he was arrested on the grassy knoll as one of the three tramps after JFK’s assassination; he wrote a novel titled Murder of a City about Tacoma dirty politics; he partied with rogues and burned down a building or two; got into S&M: and continued to write occasionally to Rap, no doubt to clinch his reputation as master obscurantist.

“Fred Crisman not only didn’t admit [Maury Island] was a hoax,” writes long-time Crisman researcher Ron Halbritter, “but [in a letter] in the January 1950 issue of Fate he called those accusations a ‘bald-faced lie.’” 31

Halbritter, through extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, studied Crisman’s FBI file, military records, and even job applications. He has a decidedly different opinion about Palmer’s saucer nemesis.

“Fred Lee Crisman would have you, me, and the rest of the world believe he was a secret agent for some three letter classified group. Crisman was the classic yardbird; injured during WW II, he became addicted to painkillers and spent the remainder of his life trying to hustle to support his habit.

“Crisman always sought to be the center of attention. When Ray Palmer described the Shaver Mystery, he claimed to have been in a dero cave in Kashmir. When Harold Dahl saw a UFO at Maury Island, the next day Crisman claimed, ‘Me, too—when nobody else was around, I did see one.’ While Jim Garrison was seeking Kennedy assassins, he suddenly got an anonymous letter implying Crisman was involved. When Roy Thinnes had a hit television show in 1967 called The Invaders, a letter, allegedly from Harold Dahl, was sent saying that the character David Vincent, and in fact the entire show, was based on Crisman’s life. These are examples of Crisman’s need for fame.”

The Tacoma Incident not only strengthened Rap’s distrust of government authority, it also energized his metaphysical side. He began to publish Mystic and then Search magazines, exploring the shadow world of the occult. He continued publishing Shaver’s mystery, as well as the writings of mystical saucer contactees like Orfeo Angelucci. He started a special feature in Mystic called “The Man From Tomorrow,” in which he predicted future events using his “random thought” technique. More than the predictions themselves, Rap liked the title. “The Man from Tomorrow” was Rap. He liked to think he was just one step ahead of the next big trend…the next big blockbuster.

“Without the Tacoma Incident, the Chicago publisher might finally have given up on the flying saucers, uncertain of the evidence of even his own eyes,” Rap said. “But that one fantastic experience told him that here was a tremendous true thing, of unknown, unpredictable importance on the stage of future history.” 32

And everyone knows future history is where the Man from Tomorrow lives.

In the book The Coming Of The Saucer Kenneth Arnold writes that your dad contacted him to investigate the Maury Island incident.
RP - Yes. My dad got these fragments from Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl who claimed that they were from these flying saucers. This was after the Kenneth Arnold sighting. Kenneth Arnold has a sighting, then there's this big hoopla on the news and all, and then after this dad got the fragments. Dad then contacted Kenneth Arnold to go out there and see what they were.
tuf - Did your dad ever publish the findings of Arnold's investigation in either Amazing Stories or Fate magazines?

RP - I'm not sure. Amazing Stories published two editorials, the first one was how Shaver had predicted these objects four years earlier, describing how they flew, because they had to fly in certain pathways. Shaver's underground caverns weren't straight so these objects flew in a zig-zag pattern. Then Kenneth Arnold said that the objects didn't fly in a normal military fashion. They zig-zagged in and out. So here you had these objects flying at a terrific rate of speed and flying the way Shaver said they would. So that's how my dad had his first editorial. He said another part of the Shaver Mystery had been proved. In the second editorial he recited Kenneth Arnold's story the way Kenneth Arnold told it. I believe that is why Kenneth Arnold liked my dad, because dad didn't want to change Kenneth Arnold's story.
tuf - So your dad became good friends with Kenneth Arnold after that?
RP - After that, yes, because dad just wanted to know what he saw. And dad was the only one who would listen to him and not call him a liar. That second editorial in Amazing Stories said 'at least we're not calling Kenneth Arnold a liar' while everyone else was. So dad stuck up for Kenneth Arnold and that probably made a difference.
tuf - In the early 1980's researcher John Keel wrote an article in which he suggested that your father actually invented the whole UFO genre to help boost circulation of his magazines.

...tuf - Lets go back to Fate Magazine.
RP - The first issue came out in 1948, but dad continued to work for Amazing Stories until 1953. Most people thought he was fired in 1949, but he actually continued doing some work till 1953 and getting paid for it.
tuf - He wasn't the editor then.
RP - No, no, he was just a freelancer.
tuf - So basically he left Ziff-Davis on good terms.
RP - That's right. My dad and others left because they didn't want to go to New York. There was a feeling that people in New York didn't think much of the people in Chicago. To them Chicago was just a cow town in the midwest.That's why alot of people who wrote in New York didn't want to be associated with a pulp magazine. Issac Asimov had that attitude. My dad actually bought his first story but Asimov, in an interview with Reader's Digest said no, that a New York publisher did. One of dad's readers called Asimov on that.

...tuf - Why did your dad start Mystic?
RP - They started Mystic because it dealt with the occult. Like my mom said, she had no idea what 'occult' meant to most people. My dad used the Webster Dictionary definition of the word which was 'the unseen'. So Mystic was just the study of the unseen. Spirits are unseen, so is bacteria. Everything that is unseen is occult. Once you find it, it is not the occult anymore. This was the definition of occult that they were writing about. Mystic was sort of like occult. Later they changed the title from Mystic to Search to broaden the area of topics they could write about.
tuf - The Hidden World was another magazine your dad published in the early 1960's. That magazine was basically a continuation of the Shaver Mysteries.
RP - Yes
...
RP - I have another point I'd like to bring up about his editorial style. He would write about both sides of a story. What I mean is that he would write an article about whatever, saying this is the way it is. Then the next month, using a different name, he would blast his previous arguement using a different theory. He would do this just to stimulate controversy, to get people to think for themselves. He just didn't write an editorial and say thats the way it is. He did it to get people to think for themselves.
tuf - Did your dad have points of view which he defended without giving an opposing view?
RP - He didn't have a general editorial stance for his magazines. If you look at all his magazines you can see so many different points of view, viewpoints, in them. You can not say that he denied anyone a say.
tuf - Would you say that your dad would claim that everything he published was true?
RP - Well, he wouldn't know exactly what was true. If someone tells you something, you publish it but you don't know whether its true or not. That's basically how everything is really. He left it up to the interested reader, or skeptic, to follow up and see for themselves. I came across some articles that were proved false after being published. My dad would then write something about that later. I mean, if you're out and come across a flying saucer and told my dad about it he'd write about what you saw.
tuf - Would your dad ever argue over a point?
RP - Well, he and Kenneth Arnold would do that. My mom would call it a 'what-if' session. They would argue what if it (ufo) was a plane, what if it was a planet, what if it came from Shavers' caves. They would try to prove what it was that they saw. But then a lot of things you can't prove because you just don't have enough information.

David Guyatt

04-21-2009, 12:29 PM

The "Letters-to-the-Editor" section was the most interesting part of the publication. Here is a typical contribution from the issue for June 1946:

Sirs:
I flew my last combat mission on May 26, [1945] when I was shot up over Bassein and ditched my ship in Ramaree Roads off Chedubs Island. I was missing five days. I requested leave at Kashmere (sic). I and Capt. (deleted by request) left Srinagar and went to Rudok then through the Khese pass to the northern foothills of the Karakoram. We found what we were looking for. We knew what we were searching for.

For heaven's sake, drop the whole thing! You are playing with dynamite. My companion and I fought our way out of a cave with submachine guns. I have two 9" scars on my left arm that came from wounds given me in the cave when I was 50 feet from a moving object of any kind and in perfect silence. The muscles were nearly ripped out. How? I don't know. My friend has a hole the size of a dime in his right bicep. It was seared inside. How we don't know. But we both believe we know more about the Shaver Mystery than any other pair.

You can imagine my fright when I picked up my first copy of Amazing Stories and see you splashing words about on the subject.

The identity of the author of this letter was withheld by request. Later Palmer revealed his name: Fred Lee Crisman. ...

http://www.scifi-fantasy-info.com/richard-sharpe-shaver.html

...These Dero still lived in the cave cities, according to Richard Sharpe Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture, and using the fantastic "ray" machines that the great ancient races left behind to project tormenting thoughts and voices into our minds. Dero could be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor "accidental" injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Women especially were singled out for brutal treatment, including rape, and Mike Dash notes that "Sado-masochism was one of the prominent themes of Shaver's writings." Though generally confined to their caves, Richard Sharpe Shaver claimed that the Deros sometimes traveled by spaceships or rockets, and had dealings with equally evil extraterrestrial beings. Shaver claimed first-hand knowledge of the Dero and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years.

Palmer edited and rewrote the manuscript, increasing the total word count to a novella length 31,000. Palmer insisted that he did nothing to alter the core elements of Richard Sharpe Shaver's story, but that he only added an exciting plot line so the story would not read "like a dull recitation." Retitled "I Remember Lemuria!"; it was published in March, 1945 issue of Amazing. The issue sold out, and generated quite a response: between 1945 and 1949, letters poured in attesting to the truth of Richard Sharpe Shaver's claims (tens of thousands of letters, according to Palmer). The correspondents, too, had heard strange voices or encountered denizens of the hollow Earth.

One of the letters to Amazing was from a woman who claimed to have gone into a deep subbasement of a Paris, France building via a secret elevator. After months of rape and other torture, the woman was freed by a group of Teros. Another letter claiming involvement with Deros came from Fred Crisman, later to gain notoriety for his role in the Maury Island Incident and the John F. Kennedy Assassination....

The Deros story is very reminiscent of the Agartha myth and I very much suspect that is actually the true root of it. If that is the case then we are looking at the same general occult grouping that sits around Martinism or splinter groups thereof (for similar connections see HERE (http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1304&page=7))

The reference to "Lemuria" merely lends weight to this conclusion imo.

"Saucers" are very much a part of this whole subject matter as can be demonstrated by, for example, Brinsley Le Poer Trench's classic books "Finding Lost Atlantis inside the Hollow Earth" (Aka "Secret of the Ages" 1974), and "Secret of the Ages - UFO's from Inside the Earth" (published 1974).

David Guyatt

04-21-2009, 12:35 PM

...Any ideas about the 'gypsies'?...

This is an important question and one very much misunderstood in the bigger Crisman picture.

When Crisman moved back to his home town of Tacoma, Washington, in 1966, another old friend he got in touch with was Miller Stevens who was a Gypsy. What followed is a good case study of how Crisman operated, and I think there is much between the lines that one can speculate on.

According to the way Crisman explains it Miller Stevens asked for his help in getting an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) plan approved for the Gypsies. Here are a few quotes from Chapter 3 in Crisman's book Murder of a City:

Miller [Stevens] knew that I had been a school teacher and administrator and he was aware that I knew something about the Federal Aid to Education programs. He had contacted me to tell me that his people needed special help and that he could get no person to listen to his pleas. …I assumed that the Office of Economic Opportunity, in its great wisdom, had arranged to take care of the Gypsy peoples of this nation as well as they categorized the rest of the minority peoples. Negroes, Number 1, Indians, Number 2, Latin-Americans, Number 3…and so on down their ever wise and never wrong ladder! Miller insisted that the Gypsy peoples were being left out completely. I was again amazed… (p. 17)

[and here, I believe is a good example of the access in high places that Crisman had all over the country]

I called Jim Wickwire, in Senator Henry Jackson’s [D-Washington] office and Jim told me that he would check and see if Miller knew what he was talking about. …I soon had some letters from Jim Wickwire and several calls from him that expressed surprise that the all-knowing OEO had little knowledge or information on the Gypsy peoples as they now exist in the U.S. …I wrote a complete research paper on the Gypsy tribes in the U.S. with some notes on their way of life and their problems with public education… I finally wrote a complete education plan for the local Gypsy people and it was given a grudging $6700 to see if it could work. The program was a success, but was not renewed. (pp. 17-18)

Whether Crisman was motivated by altruism or friendship could be questioned, but what does seem clear is that he used this project as just another weapon in the local political war that (it appears) he had instigated and managed.

I walked away from the Gypsy project after having charged Miller not one penny for the long hours and research done for his favor. I was later accused by this same team Lee & Jeffords as having made a lot of money from the Gypsy program. By that time it did not worry me for I had been assured that most of the local politicians knew Lee as a liar and Jeffords as a cheap hippie-in-residence at the [Tacoma News] Tribune. Any knock from them was a boost in most quarters of the city. (p. 20)

For me, one of the most amazing things Micheal Riconosciuto said to Kenn Thomas in the 1996 prison interview was this: "Crisman was a master at emotional contagion. An absolute master at it…" (Maury Island UFO, p. 281)

Ron Williams

On Gypsies it may be of interest that Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's tame Satanist and leading figure in the SS Ahnenerbe, claimed to be the "King of the Gypsies".

For more on him see Wiki HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Maria_Wiligut) - although a fairly recent book about him (the title of which I now forget) has far more relevant details.

Linda Minor

04-22-2009, 04:00 AM

The Deros story is very reminiscent of the Agartha myth and I very much suspect that is actually the true root of it. If that is the case then we are looking at the same general occult grouping that sits around Martinism or splinter groups thereof (for similar connections see HERE)

The reference to "Lemuria" merely lends weight to this conclusion imo.

"Saucers" are very much a part of this whole subject matter as can be demonstrated by, for example, Brinsley Le Poer Trench's classic books "Finding Lost Atlantis inside the Hollow Earth" (Aka "Secret of the Ages" 1974), and "Secret of the Ages - UFO's from Inside the Earth" (published 1974).

* The Smoky God, or, A Voyage to the Inner World (1908). Mundelein, IL: Palmer Publications.
reprinted by Ray Palmer in 1965

Linda Minor

05-11-2009, 09:02 PM

When we combine the key names of men and corporations in this thread, it leads to a conclusion that there was back in the mid to late 1970's and later an international financial group interested in weapons sales--connected to Lazards in Britain, France and the U.S.

August 1984
Issue 5

Ian Macgregor, Lazards, Pearsons, and Amax

PART 1
See also Part 2 in Lobster 6 [next post in this thread]
Summary

This article attempts to show that the present chairman of the National Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, is far more than the "right man for the job" imported from the U.S. by a Government set simply on technical efficiency. Macgregor's appointment in this country epitomises the direction in which the ruling class is pushing the economy. Not only does MacGregor have longstanding connections in the mining industry and within an important banking group, he is also strongly tied up in the armaments industry. While MacGregor is our starting point, the article will range beyond him as an individual and will indicate the circles within which he moves, circles which overlap with, and are integrated into, the British State.
Introduction

When Thatcher was first elected to office in 1979, unemployment was already rising fast and the Labour Party leadership (Callaghan and Healey in particular) had, in practical terms, already been converted to 'monetarism'. (1) It was not long before Ian MacGregor was appointed to run British Steel.(2) The 'rescue plan' which he was responsible for implementing was resisted by the steel workers but they were unable to prevent the implementation of closures and layoffs. This is no place to analyse the reasons for this defeat, but I am convinced that the I.S.T.C. leader, Bill Sirs, played a central role in undermining the strike.(3)

It was not long before it was rumoured that Ian MacGregor was to be moved to take up the chairmanship of the National Coal Board (NCB). From the start the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) opposed the appointment.

It seems highly unlikely that the people who took the decision to cut coal production, something which had long been sought by the ruling class (4), were ignorant of what, or rather whom, they were taking on. Heath's experience in 1974 should have been enough. But things are more desperate now and those who took the decision set their minds on the rewards which victory would give them, for this victory would open the way to a more total onslaught on the entire working class and the trade unions - the road would, therefore, be opened for a more authoritarian order, an order more suited to the depressed economic climate of the present with worse to come in the future.(5)

MacGregor's butchering of the steel industry was done against a background of world market contraction, a situation which has given rise to increasing antagonism between US and European steel producers. (6) Under MacGregor, Britain has led the way in Europe in making adjustments in its steel production in compliance with American demands. But while the state sector of the steel industry has been forced to contract, the private sector has also been cutting back. In April 1983 a "rationalisation" scheme for the high alloy sector of the steel castings industry (which is privately owned) was agreed to.(7) The scheme is being run by the merchant bank Lazards Brothers and Co., which is based in London. But there are also Lazards in Paris and New York. Ian MacGregor is a partner in the New York Lazards.
Lazards

Lazards in Britain has had links with the steel industry in the past. For example, Lord Kindersley, now a vice chairman of Lazards, was a director of the Steel Company of Wales from 1959 to 1967, and Sir Campbell Adamson, who joined Lazards in 1977, held management positions in Richard Thomas Baldwins Ltd and the Steel Company of Wales Ltd from 1947-1969. Interlocking directorships linked Lazards with Lloyds Bank in the past and Lloyds has close past links with the steel industry.(8)

Although the three Lazards groups have common origins, it is said that they have for a long time drifted apart. Recently, however, they have begun to move together and this has been confirmed by the news that a new holding company is being set up in Delaware called Lazards Partners, which will bind the ownership of the three more closely together.(9)

The David-Weill family seem to dominate the Paris firm - the holding company, Eurafrance, is at the centre of their web. Interlocking directorships link Lazard Freres et Cie in France to some of the largest European concerns, including the electrical engineering and electronics firm Thomson-Brandt (also an armaments producer), the automobile firms Peugot-Citroen and Fiat, and the aluminium and chemicals giant Pechiney. Through Christian Valesi the French Lazards is well connected with the French State and he is also the director of a steel company.(10)

The David-Weill family also appear to exert an influence on the New York and British Lazards, though it seems likely that Lazard Freres and Co. NY, is close to, or part of, the Rockefeller empire.(11) Interlocking directorships link the New York firm with the following: Amerada Hess, General Dynamics, Allis-Fiat, American Motors, Pechiney (see above), Owens-Illinois, Pfizer, Minerals and Resources, Schlumberger, Engelhard Minerals and Chemicals, and many others. However, the New York Lazards is a private concern and it is difficult to find out much about its activities. It seems clear though, that it is close to extractive industries.(12)

As already mentioned, the David-Weill family appear to have some influence in the London Lazards. However, the driving force here appears to be the Pearson family and their allies. The control over Lazards in Britain by the Pearson family (of which Lord Cowdray is the head) is carried out in a complicated way. Through the Cowdray Trust and the Dickinson Trust the family owns about 36% of S. Pearson and Son, a holding company. This, in turn, owns and controls an array of other companies amongst which is the Whitehall Trust, which owns 80% of Lazard Bros. and Co. Ltd. (The remaining 20% is owned by the French Lazards.)

But the spread of interests does not end here. Lazards Bros. is seen by many to be the true hub of the Pearson empire. Again, the connections established by this firm are too vast to enumerate here in any detail but some of the more obvious ones will be mentioned. Two big engineering firms which rely heavily on armaments for their survival, Vickers and Rolls Royce, were merged in 1980 when Ian Fraser, the chairman of Lazards, was deputy chairman of Vickers and chairman of Rolls Royce.(15) Lazards has or has had financial links and interlocking directorships with GEC - again, with much of its business in armaments (16) - Babcock International (17), Davy Corporation (18), BOC International (19), Wilkinson Match (20), Dalgety (21). All of these are among the largest British industrial firms. Interlocking directorships also link Lazards with Phoenix Assurance (22), Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance (23) and Sun Alliance and London Insurance (24).

This does not mean that Lazards is the sole link which these companies have with the banking sector, though in a number of cases Lazards is the most important connection. Thus, Lazards in Britain has particularly close links with the British engineering industry, with armaments and with publishing and the mass media.

But the influence of the Pearson-Lazard group extends beyond the realm of industry, finance and the media and into the state itself.

During the 1940s Lord Brand was managing director of Lazards and simultaneously heading the British Food Mission and the British Supply Council in America. He was also a representative of the British Treasury in America at the time. Adam Marris, employed at Lazards from 1929-1939, spent a short time in the Ministry of Economic Warfare in London, joined the British Embassy in Washington in 1949 as 1st Secretary, and later became Counsellor. After the war he returned to Lazards until the 1970s, and was also a director of Barclays Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Commercial Union Assurance.

Another board member, Lord Poole, was a Tory MP from 1945-1950 and chairman of the Conservative Party organisation from 1955-57. The 1st Viscount Blakenham married a daughter of the 2nd Viscount Cowdray and held several positions of state, as well as being chairman of the Conservative Party organisation from 1963-65. His son is now chairman of S. Pearson and Son.

Sir Campbell Adamson, as well as his former positions on State steel bodies and Director-General of the CBI from 1969-1976, was a deputy under-secretary at the Department of Economic Affairs from 1967-69; a member of the BBC advisory committee from.1964-67, and from then till 1975; on the Social Science Research Council from 1965-69; and on the National Economic Development Council from 1969-76.

A daughter of the 2nd Viscount Cowdray married the 9th Duke of Atholl (Duke is as high as you can go in the aristocratic hierarchy - there are only 26 of them). Their son, 10th Duke of Atholl, holds a number of directorships of Pearson companies including the Westminster Press and Pearson-Longman. Being a large Scottish landowner, he is a member of the Scottish Landowners Federation, and was convenor of that body from 1976-79. With this connection the Pearson-Lazard group joins the other 'Royal' merchant banking families - the Rothschilds, Barings et al.(25) Lord Cowdray has been described as the richest peer (26) and the largest donator of funds to the Tory party.(27)

It was noted soon after the Falklands War had ended that it had been a great boon to the armaments industry.(28) Amongst those which seem to have benefitted are Fairey and GEC, which, as we have seen, have links with the Pearson-Lazards group. It is also interesting that the former Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, who resigned at the start of the conflict, became chairman of GEC when he left the government, while John Nott (knighted for the bravery he displayed in running the war), became a director of Lazards when he left the Government. It should be mentioned here that GEC also has close links with the merchant bank Morgan Grenfell, which used to be directly controlled by the US Morgan group. The Pearsons have longstanding relations with the Morgans of America, going back to the time when the 1st Lord Cowdray, Weetman Pearson, made some millions out of the Mexican oil business in rivalry with the Rockefellers at the beginning of the century.(29). In 1957 Lord Kindersley (see above), then chairman of Lazards, stated that Morgans and Lazards were probably closer than any other two issuing houses.(30)

A more obscure link connects the Pearson-Lazard group into the orbit of Anglo-American politics. This is the so-called "Round Table Groups" which are said to have been set up on lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes in 1908-11. (31) Finance was contributed by the Morgan group and a group of international financiers based in London led by Lazards. At the head of the organisation, whose aim appears to have been to establish a world government centred on the two Anglo-Saxon heartlands, was Lord Milner, a powerful figure in Whitehall and the City of London.(32) Milner died in 1925. Later Robert (who became Lord) Brand, whom we have already met, took over. When he died in 1963, Adam Marris, whom we have also met, took charge.(33) It is not clear whether this organisation still operates or, if it does, how powerful it is. There are, however, plenty of traces of its former existence and plenty of indications that the Anglo-American collaboration which it strove for has had profound effects upon the British economy, polity and military.

E. H.

Part 2, MacGregor and Amax, MacGregor and Armaments will be in Lobster 6.

Notes to Part 1

1. See The Economics of Crisis and the Crisis of Economics, Gunder Frank in Critique No 9, 1978 .
2. MacGregor was appointed deputy chairman (part-time) in May-June 1980, before becoming chairman later in 1980. Sir Charles Villiers was chairman during the steel workers' strike. Sir Charles was executive deputy chairman of Guinness Peat, a merchant bank, and a director of Banque Belge Ltd., Courtaulds and Sun Life Assurance.
3. Bill Sirs seems to have taken a consistently rightist position on nuclear weapons and was a signatory of a recent pro-Nato advertisement in which he reveals a connection with the Royal Institute for International Affairs, a body which has been linked with the Round Table Groups (which we meet later), and which is close to the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations in the US.
4. See Guardian 5th August 1983 - Power Industry Cuts Contract For Coal. In April 1975, Mary Goldring wrote in Investors' Chronicle (18th April) that coal is the biggest offender by far and stated that "if British miners could average even half the output of the American - which would mean shutting the poorest mines - the £700 million annual wage bill would be halved."
5. In a TV programme last Christmas on the future, John Eatwell, the economist, using sophisticated econometric models, showed Britain's short-run future to be extremely gloomy, even on the most optimistic assumptions. See his book Whatever Happened To Britain? which was shown as a TV series in 1982. Also Bob Beckman, The Downwave (1982), for a pro-capitalist holocaustic view of the future. Note than neither of these authors introduces the problem of world war into the analysis.
6. This has been evident since at least 1982. The following articles from the Guardian show that it continues to be a serious problem: 'US steel firm acts to cut import limits' (18th November 1983); 'Europe and US in steel clash' (8th Feb.1984); 'Transatlantic trade friction growing' (27th Feb. 1984). The last article shows that the trade disputes are general and affect food, textiles and other goods.
7. Guardian 5th April 1983 'Lazard Bros steel cuts proposal is agreed'.
8. Who's Who and Directory of Directors. Adamson was also director of Richard Thomas and Baldwins from 1959-'69 and held important positions on State steel bodies.
9. Guardian (19th May 1984) 'Lazard Bros. together again'. Although it seems likely that the three groups co-operated throughout their existence, this greater pooling of finance suggests a closing of the ranks in the face of world economic collapse, a phenomenon we meet throughout this article.
10. Lazard Freres is "part of the French empire of the holding company Eurafrance, which controls insurance companies, property companies, television rentals, and other banks; but David-Weill now spends most of his time in New York, where the Lazard connection is even more wide-ranging." Anthony Sampson The Money Lenders (1981) p240
11. See Charles Levinson's Vodka-Cola (1978) "Meyer provided the link between the Rockefeller family and the French banks..Lazard Freres was the largest shareholder in the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, which opened a branch in New York called Paris-bas Corporation. Directed by Robert Craft, vice-president of the Chase-Manhattan, it numbered Andre Meyer, David Rockefeller and John McCloy, former president of the World Bank, among its members." Meyer was president of the New York Lazards and Chase-Manhattan is a Rockefeller vehicle. The magazine Lords of the Realm (now defunct) in the 2nd and final issue (1983) numbered Lazards in New York as one of the five major Rockefeller allies.
12. Details from Standard and Poor's Register 1982
13. See Who Owns Whom and Extel
14. Fairey manufactures bridges and trackways. In 1934 the Union of Democratic Control published a booklet The Secret International which described Fairey as "the most important firm manufacturing military aeroplanes", but the document named Vickers as the most important arms firm of the day. Fairey, as we shall see, is connected to the Lazards group, but Vickers is no longer the king pin. The defence industry must change with the times, and British Aerospace is now at the heart of Britain's weapons programme. See War Lords - CIS Report on the UK Arms Industry (1982)
15. The 1979 report of Rolls Royce shows that Lazards' chairman and Rolls chairman Ian Fraser, was the largest shareholder of Rolls' shares of all the directors, by a long chalk. It should also be noted that the chairman and other directors of Vickers have wide-ranging interests and are not necessarily members of the Pearson-Lazards group. Their connections include Lloyds, RTZ, Toronto Dominion Bank, Hill Samuel and Shell. One of them, Sir Alistair Frame, also born in Scotland, chief executive and deputy chairman of RTZ, director of the electronics firm Plessey, Toronto Dominion Bank and Britoil, and a director of the UK Atomic Energy Authority from 1964-68 was actually tipped to become the next chairman of BSC after MacGregor (Guardian 18th February 1983), but the unknown Bob Haslam got the job instead. Compare Frame's connections with those of MacGregor outlined in part 2 of this article.
16. The firms which combined to form GEC have strong Lazards connections. In 1931 Napiers was bought by Lazards and in 1937 Lord Brand of Lazards was a director of the company. In 1929 Lazards (then owned 50% by Pearson and 50% by David-Weill) gained 60% of English Electric's shares and in 1942 took over Napiers. The Morgan group owned 46% of AEI's shares and 34% of GEC's in the 1920s and 30s but in 1935, 400,000 shares in GEC were sold by the Americans to a group headed by Lazards. AEI was merged with GEC in 1967 and English Electric joined the fold in 1968. Lord Kindersley of Lazards was a director of GEC from 1968-1970. See R. Jones and 0. Marriott Anatomy of a Merger (1970)
17. Lord Netherthorpe of Lazards is a director. Lazards arranged the finance for Babcock's building of a power station in Zimbabwe in 1982. Babcock is deeply involved in building nuclear power stations in Britain and elsewhere.
18. lan Frazer, Lazards' chairman, is a director of Davy. Lazards were lead managers in a $1 billion issue for the company in 1982. Davy is an engineering and contracting firm which builds plants for a variety of industrial processes. Both Davy and Babcock hint at the origins of the Pearson empire which was built by Weetman Pearson, the first Lord Cowdray, on the basis of large-scale contract engineering work throughout the world.
19. Ian Fraser is a director of BOC.
20. Kindersley (see above) is a director of Wilkinson, as is S. H. Wright of Lazards.
21. Lord Netherthorpe of Lazards is deputy chairman of Dalgety; Lt. Col. C.P. Dawney and J.A. Turner of Lazards are former directors. Dalgety is a conglomerate mainly involved in foodstuffs.
22. Dawney (see 21) is chairman, and E. W. Phillips of Lazards is a director of Phoenix, which owns 12.98% of Vickers preference stock at time of merger.
23. Kindersley is director and ex-chairman of Guardian Royal which owned 5.5% of preference stock and 5.12% of preference stock of Vickers at time of merger.
24. Kindersley is director of Sun Alliance. Sir Peter Matthews, chairman of Vickers is also a director of Sun Alliance.
25. Who's Who and Carroll Quigley's The Anglo-American Establishment (1981) p304
26. See D. Sutherland The Land Owners (1968)
27. Anthony Sampson Anatomy of Britain Today (1965)
28. Guardian (4th June 1982) "One important aerospace industry supplier, Fairey, admits that it has cleared the decks in some cases to meet urgent demands from the MOD."
29. See Desmond Young, Member for Mexico (1966); R. O'Connor The Oil Barons (1972); P. Calvert The Mexican Revolution (1968)
30. See Sampson (note 27) p437. It seems to be commonly believed that the Morgan group which dominated American politics and economy from the end of the last century was pushed into second place by the Rockefellers in the 1930s and '40s. According to the US Progressive Labor Party they did this by 'placing their man Roosevelt in the White House and used government projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority to attack Morgan interests.' From their pamphlet Who Rules Britain?
31. Carroll Quigley Tragedy and Hope(1966) pp950-951
32. ibid. Milner apparently refused to become a partner in Morgan Grenfell but did become a member of the London Joint Stock Bank, a precursor to the Midland Bank.
33. ibid. His father, Sir William, was apparently a founder member of the Round Table group.

Linda Minor

05-11-2009, 09:13 PM

What is fascinating to me about the following is that Karl Rove's stepfather, Louis Rove, worked many years for AMAX or Climax Molybdenum and retired in Palm Springs, the setting for some high-powered Republican golfers.
Also, Margaret Thatcher came from Grantham in the UK, which was the town where Sir Denis Kendall had his weapons manufacturing company, BMARC. Kendall's wife grew up in Columbus, Ohio (Prescott Bush's hometown), where she ran a dance school before she met him on an international tour. Her brother was an actor in California, where he knew Ronald Reagan. She and Kendall divorced before he became a U.S. citizen and moved permanently to California.

Ian MacGregor
Part 2: AMAX and armaments
See also Part 1 in Lobster 5 [previous post]
Ian Macgregor and AMAX

We have followed one of Macgregor's leads into the British Establishment; now we return to the man himself. He was born in 1912 in Kinlochleven and graduated from Glasgow University with a BSc in metallurgical engineering. He was a trainee manager at the British Aluminium Co., worked for William Beardmore Co. in Glasgow, and participated in the Mission of the Ministry of Supply to North America in 1940, where it seems likely that he met Brand and/or Marris. After his wartime service he went on to pursue a business career in the US and became a US citizen. By 1957 he had become Vice President of the Climax Molybdenum Co., which later merged with the American Metal Co. to form AMAX Inc. MacGregor held top positions in AMAX during the 1960s and was Chairman from 1969 to 1977, and honorary chairman from 1977 to 1982.(1)

AMAX (we shall examine its ownership later) is a gigantic mining conglomerate, involved in the extraction and refining of molybdenum, coal (3rd largest producer in the US with a bad reputation for its open-cast mining operations and labour relations), tungsten (2nd largest producer in the US), and copper. It is a major nickel producer in the US and mines/refines lead, silver, cadmium and zinc in Africa (including Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and South Africa), and iron ore in Australia. In the latter the company earned itself a very bad reputation for its involvement in destroying the communal lands occupied by the Aboriginals - this involved a massive police presence to prevent opposition from the Aboriginals and trade unionists. (2)

In its 1982 report AMAX claims to be the western world's largest producer of tungsten and this includes major prospects for future mine developments when needed in the Canadian northwest and Great Britain. It has large silver holdings in Honduras and is getting into gold in a big way. It is the 2nd largest magnesium producer in the US and the 3rd largest in the western world. Also, AMAX owns the only nickel refinery in the US.

AMAX is interlocked with the other big multinational mining companies. For example, in Botswana it jointly owns nickel and copper mines together with Anglo-American Corp. (the South African Oppenheimer monopoly), and Charter Consolidated (a big British mining finance company active in South Africa also). AMAX owns 11% of the French Rothschild mining conglomerate Imetal. which has extensive interests in Africa and elsewhere.

The ownership of AMAX is complex and seems to have changed over the years. During the 1930s American Metal Co. became a large copper miner, refiner and smelter. Although it was an independent group it was linked to Morgan, and Morgan was a powerful influence on the major copper producer Kennecott, which was owned by the Guggenheim family. At that time big copper mines had just opened up in what was then called Rhodesia. Two big interconnected groups dominated there. Morgan was well represented in one and the other was controlled by Rhodesian Selection Trust. Since then things have changed several times (3) During the 1960s Selection Trust (described as a British company) owned 11.5% of American Metal Climax and had 4 representatives on the board.(4) By the end of the 1970s Selection Trust had only 8% of AMAX and Standard Oil of California owned 21.7% of the stock. SOCAL tried to take over AMAX completely (offering $4 billion) but were beaten off. (5) By 1983 SOCAL's share of AMAX had fallen to 19.7% but Selection Trust had been taken over by B.P. for $925 million in 1980 and B.P. now owns 6.5% of AMAX. It is also noteworthy that the B.P.-dominated Standard Oil of Ohio (SOHIO) in America successfully took over the formerly Guggenheim/Morgan preserve, the giant Kennecott Corp. in 1981, so that B.P. now owns what is probably the largest copper producer in the world.

Since SOCAL still owns a major stake in AMAX it is worth looking at the ultimate ownership of SOCAL itself. It is thought by some that no external interests control this company.(6) However, others see a major chunk of this part of the original Rockefeller-Standard Oil empire as being in the hands of the Rockefeller family still (or again). (7) The group is, of course, based in California and has long-standing connections with the banks in that part of America. In particular it has interlocks with the Crocker National Bank. The Crocker family is big in America's largest bank, Bank of America, which is based in San Francisco. (According to SOCAL's 1983 annual report Samuel H. Armacost is a director of SOCAL and president of Bank of America.) But the Crocker National Bank was sold to the Midland Bank group a few years ago. A recent publication lists Midland Bank group, Rockefeller interests and Sarofilm (Fayez) and Co. as the three top shareholders, in that order.(8) Midland, one of Britain's big 4 clearing banks, crops up again, later on.

Ian MacGregor moves in this world of takeover and rivalry and since the end of the 1970s the predatory activities of the giant oil, minerals and financial groups has increased. At the same time as being an inter-industrial reorganisation and rivalry, what has been happening involves both British and American firms. I return to the objectives of this movement that is still going on later, but it undoubtedly involves some kind of rationalisation among the extractive industries. In 1983 it was announced that Charter Consolidated, having divested itself of its interests in Selection Trust, was aiming to take over a loss-making Scottish engineering company, Anderson Strathclyde, which specialises in making long-wall mining equipment for the NCB. The movement also indicates a strong inter-penetration of US and UK capital, as seen with the Midland Bank take-over of Crocker and the BP take-over of Kennecott. American companies have also been moving in on British firms - in 1982 it was announced that Aetna Life and Casualty, the US insurance and pensions giant which has old Morgan connections, was to take over Midland's merchant banking subsidiary, Samuel Montagu.(9)
Ian MacGregor and Armaments

Many of the metals mined and refined by AMAX have military applications. Molybdenum, of which AMAX is the world's leading producer, is used in conjunction with other alloying elements in high-speed cutting tools, propeller shafts, turbine rotors and armour - piercing projectiles etc. Nickel (AMAX is a major producer), which is used to increase steel's toughness, ductility and strength, is used for armour plating and the cycles for its demand follow the fluctuations in demand for armaments - thus demand for nickel rose during World Wars 1 and 2, and during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, falling after these.(10)

International Who's Who lists MacGregor as a director of the Brunswick Corporation which manufactures marine power and recreational equipment (including sports equipment with the 'MacGregor' label), and technical products for various industries, including the defence department of the USA. [This would seemingly connect him to Robert Booth Nichols.] In the latter it is listed as producing aircraft radomes, rocket motor cases, missile and rocket tubes, pressure vessels, transportable shelters, camouflage materials, and other products for defensive systems against chemical/biological warfare etc. I can only speculate here that some of the metals it must use are bought from AMAX. It would be interesting to know if Brunswick Corporation makes parts used in the construction of Cruise missiles. The informed reader will have noted already that Lazards in New York has a directoral interlock with the firm which constructs the Cruise missile, General Dynamics. (11)

MacGregor's connections with the armaments business do not end here. He is listed as having been, among other things, a director of the giant conglomerate LTV which, in 1979, was the 26th largest supplier to the US Dept. of Defence. (12) He is also a director of Atlantic Assets Trust an investment trust which, like many British investment trusts, is based in Scotland and is heavily into US companies. While Atlantic Assets is not big - in 1979 the capital employed totalled £147 million - and most of its holdings are in relatively small companies, and are minority stakes only, it aims at representation on the boards of the companies in which it invests and at some control over their corporate plans for future growth.

About 50% of Atlantic Asset's investments are in the US, 40% in the UK and 5.5% in Canada. (13) In America it has a large share in Shared Medical Systems which is involved in the computer-aided financial management of private hospitals in the US. In the UK it owns about one third of the issued share capital of United Scientific Holdings, an armaments firm manufacturing armoured vehicles, optical and electronic equipment. In August 1981 USH acquired Alvis Ltd., manufacturers of armoured vehicles, from British Leyland. USH is a young company competing with older, larger and more established firms like GKN-Sankey. It seems likely that it is being helped along in some way.

One thing which is interesting here is that MacGregor's career through the British State-owned sector did not begin with his appointment at BSC but with his directorship at British Leyland back in 1975. Under Michael Edwardes, he was Deputy Chairman of BL too, from 1977 till 1980.

BL is, of course, not only a commercial automobile manufacturer but is also involved in the manufacture of military vehicles, though with the loss of Alvis to United Scientific this has probably been reduced a bit. It is also interesting that the chairman of United Scientific, Peter Levene, who has stated that his company is "run like a dictatorship ... I'm the dictator" (14), was appointed in January this year to work as an unpaid adviser to Michael Heseltine, the Defence Secretary, for 6 months to help improve the management of the Defence Ministry.(15) Many of Atlantic Assets' other investments are in high-tech firms (including Cable and Wireless), but it also has shares in Pennzoil, which as well as owning oil and mining interests owns molybdenum mines, and Teck Corporation, based in Canada, which owns a copper-molybdenum mine and mines silver, gold and other minerals, as well as oil and gas. (16)

Before we finish with MacGregor's armaments connections we can note one other interesting fact which further indicates the social milieu in which he moves. We have noted the Midland Bank connection via Socal with AMAX. One of the directors of Midland, Sir John Cuckney, was a director of Lazards from 1964-70. With an impressive set of connections both within business and in the service of the State, Cuckney is currently chairman of the Thomas Cooke group and of Brook Bond, and also of the engineering group John Brown. He has been a director of the Midland Bank since 1978 and of the Royal Insurance since 1979. His most interesting State appointment is as chairman of the International Military Services - the government's undercover arms sales organisation, the sole overseas representative for the weapons manufactured at Royal Ordnance factories - where he has been since 1974. He has also been governor for the Centre for International Briefing at Farnham Castle since 1974. (17)
Ian MacGregor - a man of prudence and principles?

Since Ian MacGregor came to Britain he has made it clear that the giant firms he has been put in control of must be made to "balance their books". The implication, forcefully promoted by the 'monetarist' Thatcher, is that the nationalised industries don't work and privatisation is necessary. But, as we have seen, a massive rationalisation movement has been going throughout the capitalist economies affecting firms whether they be private or State-controlled. Multinational monsters like IT and T have been divided up; indeed, it was Lazards of New York which enabled IT and T to grow big in the 1960s and after - this is an aspect of Lazards in New York we have not covered, though IT and T's involvement in the coup in Chile is well known. (18) Ideological arguments are spouted to justify the large-scale plunder that is taking place, but monetarism is merely a facade behind which the giant firms and the financial empires of which they are a part seize the remaining profitable areas of an economy which is sinking deeper into depression.

The effect of the recession is felt nowhere more deeply among the business community than in the minerals sector. According to one publication produced by Lloyds Bank:

"The full impact of the recession hit the minerals sector in early 1982. The metals sector, being the most sensitive to business cycles, moved into a deep trough. With key industries such as housing, construction and motors depressed, production cutbacks were necessary through temporary and some permanent mine closures." (19)

During the 1960s the metals firms were operating at full tilt. AMAX grew tremendously in the 1970s under MacGregor. He transformed the firm from one that was primarily concerned with copper and molybdenum into the mining conglomerate that it is today. Replying to critics who accused him of over-borrowing, MacGregor is said to have replied:

MacGregor is, therefore, a man of the times. In the boom he is a big spender, speculating on the possibility that demand will exist in the future; in the depression he calls for cuts and pretends to be a paragon of prudence. At the same time, he and his colleagues search for ways in which to increase the demand for metals. The new technologies involving microprocessors are, however, not big enough to satisfy the enormous capacity set up at great cost by the minerals moguls in the post-war years. It has become increasingly clear to them that their only salvation is an increased demand for armaments. This demand is presently being supplied by Western governments. Civilisation rests of metals, but society's capacity to produce metals has outgrown ordinary consumer needs and they have become inextricably bound up with the production of arms.

AMAX in 1982 was operating the molybdenum end of its empire at less than half capacity. At the beginning of this year it agreed to form a joint venture with Britoil PLC to explore and develop offshore and onshore oil in the US. While this further underlines the close connections which this company has with British business it also shows how badly in the red AMAX is, since it has been argued that the deal was done merely as a means of raising cash to cover its short-term debt. (21)

MacGregor has no qualms about whom he deals with. In April 1983 while chairman of BSC and chairman elect of the NCB, MacGregor flew out to Moscow. His visit to the "evil empire" was "aimed to boost exports of steel and steel products to the Soviet Union." (22) His recent expressions of outrage at the National Union of Mineworkers' contacts with Libya should be viewed in this light.

There is a lot more to say about MacGregor and his connections (23) but it seems clear from all this that he is part of a shadowy network of highly-placed people, allied with other groups (some of which have not been mentioned here) which together dominate the British economy and aim to squeeze the last dregs out of it for themselves. In the process they are intent on building a more authoritarian regime in Britain, a regime which will allow them to push Britain into a more aggressive and war-like stance, one that would secure vast profits for the arms manufacturers and the banks, investment trusts and suppliers which surround them.

E. H.

AMAX personnel

Looking at the board of AMAX (Standard and Poor's 1984 and Who's Who in Finance and Industry) we find that at least 4 of its directorate are Republicans and none of them claim to be Democrats. Of these 4, one is none other than Gerald Ford, ex-President. Ford is also a director of the Twentieth Century Fund (since 1981) and American Express (since 1982) He also sits on the board of Shearson, Loeb, Roades Inc. A former partner of this firm, which is now merged under American Express and called Shearson/American Express, is C.M. Loeb who was on AMAX from 1932 and held several important positions in the firm. C.M. Loeb Jnr. is listed as a director of AMAX.

Pierre Gousseland, currently chairman and president of AMAX, is French by birth and education and arrived in America in 1948, 8 years after MacGregor. He joined AMAX a year later. He is also a director of American International Gp Inc and French American Banking Corporation (in which the Banque International de Paris appears to dominate). He is also a member of the British Iron and Steel Institute.

Another AMAX director, J.D. Bonney, was born in Blackpool in 1930 and joined AMAX in the sixties. Between 1959 and 1960 he worked for Iraq Petroleum Co, owned by Shell, B.P. and other oil companies. More significantly for us he has been vice president of SOCAL since 1972 (SOCAL Europe, that is.) Since SOCAL owns about 20% of AMAX it is not surprising that two other names listed in AMAX reports show interlocks with SOCAL - till 1983, Perrin Fay, V.P. of SOCAL and, till 1984, Sellers Stough, another SOCAL vice president.

NOTES

1. International Who's Who 1983/4
2. Information on AMAX is from Everybody's Business 1980 edited by Moskowitz, Katz and Levering. Information on AMAX in Australia from the magazine Natural Peoples' News, No 5 Spring 1981

AMAX is also involved in gold and silver extraction in Mexico and Central America and in many other mineral resources including phosphates and sulphuric acid.
3. See Anna Rochester Rulers of America pp166 -169. Rhodesian Selection Trust was owned by the American Metal Co.
4. D.M. Kotz Bank Control of Large Corporations in the US (1978)
5. Everybody's Business (above note 2)
6. For example, see Kotz, above.
7. Everybody's Business (above)
8. Berry, Wood and Preusch: Dollars and Dictators: A Guide to Central America Zed Press, 1983
9. Times 19 January 1983 'Take-over battle that rocked the City'
10. McDivitt and Manners Minerals and Men (1974) This work was sponsored by Resources for the Future, of which MacGregor is a director.
11. Details on Brunswick are from Standard and Poor's. Information on Cruise builders from Guardian 12 July 1980, by Michael Getler.
12. Everybody's Business (above)
13. See Hambro Company Guide and Extel Investment Trust Yearbook 1983
14. See Extel and McCarthy cards. Levene quote from Guardian 1 May 1984. Note that as MacGregor came to work in Britain in 1975 he was, like De Lorean, brought over by a Labour government.
15. Financial Times 22 November 1983
16. Penzoil information from Standard and Poor's. Teck information from Rowe and Pitman Qrtly Report, Base Metal and Coal, January 1982
17. Who's Who 1983, also War Lords (CIS Report)
18. On ITT see Sampson's The Sovereign State (1973)
19. Lloyd's Bank Group, Canada Economic Report 1984
20. Everybody's Business (above) p 547
21. Guardian 7 February 1984 and 6 February 1984
22. Guardian 26 April 1983
23. I want to mention only one other here. Who's Who In Finance in Industry lists MacGregor as a director of Resources for the Future. This is a group set up to tackle the problems arising from economic growth - eg pollution, urban expansion and so on. Opposing itself to the 'Limits to Growth' school, it promotes what it calls 'technological optimism' which boils down to finding arguments to justify fast-breeder reactors and so on. The organisation is financed and was set up by the Ford Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Board. It also receives substantial grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.

David Guyatt

05-12-2009, 08:19 AM

On Lazard's Lord Brand and Steel the following links to a fairly lengthy article. I have not posted it here because it is slightly off topic, although it is mighty interesting. I used to know a very senior Merchant Banker who became part of the Rhodes-Milner Group after joining Lazard's at Brand's urging. Contrary to normal practice he was not an Oxford man but rather Cambridge.

Art one point all non ferrous metals were controlled by the Group. This little gem can be found in Quigley's Anglo-American Establishment where the extensive footnotes yield as much interesting information as the body of the book.

I mention in passing that Lord Selborne, who is mentioned a few times in the article and who succeeded Lord Milner as chief of the "Group" developed a great interest after WWII, in the Priory of Sion...

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/histmilner.html

Helen Reyes

08-23-2009, 11:18 PM

The Deros story is very reminiscent of the Agartha myth and I very much suspect that is actually the true root of it. If that is the case then we are looking at the same general occult grouping that sits around Martinism or splinter groups thereof.

True, good call, but Crisman was doing something else here. Rene Guenon in Lord of the World (Le Roi du Monde, recently mistranslated/mistitled as King of the World) even supplies the Gypsy connexion: he calls them a people in tribulation who had formerly lived in Agartha. Shaver was more Agarthic, while Crisman was talking about the "mek": the lasers in Burma and those that he said caused the Army Air Corps craft to crash, killing the two airmen near Kelso, Washington.

This was in 1947 and earlier, before lasers were invented.

Crisman seems to have been a veteran of the OSS in China/Indochina. That puts him close company with E Howard Hunt and some other important CIA figures. Hunt also went in for writing thrillers and probably knew or even contributed to the Shaver cycle.

Bannister was somehow involved keeping Paperclip secret. Maury Island is a stone's skip away from old Boeing Field. Dahl went silent and then disappeared because he had a visitation from the first Man in Black the day after Maury who told him everything that happened in detail and warned Dahl to keep silent to save himself and his family.

Ray Palmer is anonymously credited in the internet document Secrets of the Mojave because he advocated for Navajo rights and support. Shaverism is grounded more in the native American cave tradition than in Traditionalism. Fortean Times has done some work documenting this native American tradition from the European American side. Art Bell's Mel's Hole series also belongs in it. If you read Palmer's editorials in Amazing after June, 1947, he begins to hint at a dangerous fifth column taking shape in America, foreign nationals wielding "dero mek". He's hinting at Paperclip Nazis with saucer technology.

I think if you look into it, Garrison and Bannister were both working for the FBI in Washington state in 1947, and both had contact of some kind with Crisman.

Palmer was discredited by some over Maury Island because he "lost" the physical evidence. His special blowout Shaver issue of June, 1947, was plagued by all sorts of dirty tricks, printer devils, imps of the perverse, mysterious disappearances, gremlins, deroes or g-men, Palmer never specifies. truly wyrd stuff. the kind of manifestation john keel should be interested in.

Jan Klimkowski

08-24-2009, 06:25 PM

Helen - an excellent post. Welcome to DPF!

On Paperclip, Banister, Crisman, and the creation of the "flying saucer" legend, the supposed July 1947 memo from General Nathan Twining detailing the presence of German scientists from Fort Bliss & White Sands - ie Paperclip scientists - at the scene of an "air accident" is most provocative. Here's an excerpt:

The following is a partial excerpt of the lengthy and detailed
information of a July 16, 1947, document from Headquarters Army Air Force
Commanding General, Nathan Twining, to Commanding General Air Defense
Command. "This three page bureaucratic report provides the first glimpses of
Lt. General Nathan F. Twining's Air Accident Report original published in
Leonard Stringfield's (now deceased) Status Report VII, in 1994. Ryan Wood
comments: "Twining apparently describes in first order detail the inside of
a flying disc, everything from the typewriter-like keys that control the
propulsion system to a thirty-five-foot-diameter doughnut shaped tube,"
possibly filled with heavy water. "The significance and consistency of the
technical content has not been evaluated, although it is clear that the
writing is consistent with 1947 state of the art, not modern."

"1. As ordered by Presidential Directive, dated 9 July 1947, a
preliminary investigation of a recovered "Flying Disc" and remains of a
possible second disc, was conducted by the senior staff of this command. The data furnished in this report was provided by the engineer staff personnel
of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T. Additional data was
supplied by the scientific personnel of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CIT
and the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group, headed by Dr. Theodore
von Karman. Further analysis was conducted by personnel from Research and
Development.

2. It is the collective view of this investigative body, that
the aircraft recovered by the Army and Air Force units near Victorio Peak
and Socorro, New Mexico, are not of U.S. manufacture for the following
reasons:

a. The circular, disc-shaped 'planform' design does not
resemble any design currently under development by this command nor of any
Navy project.

b. The lack of any external propulsion system, power plant,
intake, exhaust either for propeller or jet propulsion, warrants this view.

c. The inability of the German scientists from Fort Bliss and
White Sands Proving Ground to make a positive identification of a secret
German V weapon out of these discs. Though the possibility that the Russians
have managed to develop such a craft remains. The lack of any markings, ID
numbers or instructions in Cyrillic, has placed serious doubt in the minds
of many, that the objects recovered are not of Russian manufacture either.

d. Upon examination of the interior of the craft, a
compartment exhibiting a possible atomic engine was discovered. At least
this is the opinion of Dr. Oppenheimer and Dr. von Karman. A possibility
exists that part of the craft itself comprises the propulsion system; thus,
allowing the reactor to function as a heat exchanger and permitting the
storage of energy into a substance for later use. This may allow the
converting of mass into energy, unlike the release of energy of our atomic
bombs. The description of the power room is as follows:

(1) A doughnut shaped tube approximately thirty-five feet in
diameter, made of what appears to be a plastic material, surrounding a
central core. This tube was translucent, approximately one inch thick. The
tube appeared to be filled with a clear substance, possibly a heavy water. A
large rod, centered inside the tube, was wrapped in a coil of what appears
to be of copper material, ran through the circumference of the tube. This
may be the reactor control mechanism or a storage battery. There were no
moving parts discernible within the (words obscured here).

(2) This activation of a electrical potential is believed to
be the primary power to the reactor, though it is only a theory at present.
Just how a heavy water reactor functions in this environment is unknown.

(3) Underneath the power plant, was discovered a ball-turret,
approximately ten feet in diameter. This turret was encompassed by a series
of gears that has a unusual ratio not known by any of our engineers. On the
underside of the turret were four circular cavities, coated with some smooth
material not identified. These cavities are symmetrical, but seem to be
movable. Just how is not known. The movement of the turret coincides with
the dome-shaped cupola compartment above the power room. It is believed that
the main propulsion system is a bladeless turbine, similar to current
development now underway at AMC and the Mogul Project.

A possible theory was devised by Dr. August Steinhoff, Dr. Werner von Braun and Dr. Theodore von Karman as the craft moves through the air, it somehow draws the oxygen from the atmosphere and by a induction process, generates a atomic fusion reaction (see TAB 2). The air outside the craft would be ionized,thus propelling the craft forward. Coupled with the circular air foil for lift, the craft would presumably have an unlimited range and air speed. This may account for the reported absence of any noise and the apparent blue flame often associated with rapid acceleration.

(4) On the deck of the power room, there are what resembles
typewriter keys, possibly reactor/powerplant controls. There were no
conventional electronics nor wiring to be seen connecting these controls to
the propulsion turret.

e. There is a flight deck located inside the cupola section.
It is round and domed at the top. The absence of canopy, observation
windows/blisters, or any optical projection, lends support to the opinion
that this craft is either guided by remote viewing or is remotely
controlled.

(4) Craft components appear to be molded and pressed into a
perfect fit."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AGETI/message/6721

Joseph P Farrell analyzes this document with his usual perspicacity on p303ff of his essential Reich of the Black Sun.

Helen - please also take a look at the thread linked below, and add your thoughts, if appropriate:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26

Charles Drago

08-25-2009, 01:19 AM

"The absence of canopy, observation windows/blisters, or any optical projection, lends support to the opinion that this craft is either guided by remote viewing or is remotely controlled." [emphasis added]

Jan,

To my knowledge, the term "remote viewing" (as it appears in what purports to be a document written in 1947) had not been coined at the time of this usage.

Are we looking at prima facie evidence of a modern-day forger's screw-up?

Or was remote viewing as we understand it today being conducted over sixty years ago?

And the so-called "heavy water" -- is the reference intended to bring to mind the infamous "red mercury," a/k/a the mystery "serum" used in Farrell's "bell" device?

Helen Reyes

08-25-2009, 10:29 AM

Thanks Jan, will take a look at that thread.

As for "remote viewing," I've come across it in WWII-era documents, where it never means psychic phenomena a la Major Ed Dames or Ingo Swann. It means literally viewing something remotely, by eye, telescope or via some telemetry device. That doesn't make the document authentic, of course.

Helen Reyes

08-25-2009, 01:25 PM

Crisman's 2nd letter to AS with Palmer's response.

May 1947 Amazing Stories, page 168, "Discussions":

Report from Alaska

Sirs :
I have just finished reading the September issue
of Harper's Magazine, and I noted where Williams
S. Baring-Gould had selected my letter to you last
winter as an example of crackpot letters. I bit-
terly resent this. It is all well and good to sit in
a comfortable office or home and look upon far
places and strange things as through a veil of un-
belief . . . however, when you are there and
death looks you right in the eye . . . you feel a
little different and the safe, comfortable U. S. A.
becomes the world of never-was and "does it
really exist?". I felt that you too, Mr. Palmer,
had more or less given me up for a jerk who was
only trying to pull your leg. Again the fear that
maybe all this was only a promotion stunt and
gales of laughter in the AS office.
Well, you see how it is. Dick and I have made
our Alaska journey and we failed, we lost and we
lost a lot, Dick lost his life. The details I don't
suppose you are interested in, however Shaver
would get a kick out of a journey to the Alaska
cave. It seems strange to read AS and see the
"little" people still wondering and still "investi-
gating" their claims of caves. Go and take a look
for yourself, I say. Sure, it takes money and guts.
I know, I have spent all I have of both. It sickens
me when I read an article like Gould's. So smug
and sure. After all, Dick is dead, and that meant
a lot to me. I don't care whether you be-
lieve or not, I'm sick of the whole mess. I don't
even want to think of last year, and of Alaska
least of all. Just wanted to go on record as being
further sickened by Gould's article.
Fred L. Crisman
125 Woodland
Salishan Add.
Tacoma, Washington

Well, there you are, Mr. Crisman, on record.
And we heartily agree with you. But we are in-
terested in the details of your little journey, and
we offer herewith to publish your story of that
Alaska cave complete. Our readers want proof.
We want proof. If you've got any at all, we
want it. In your previous letter, you asked us to
keep your identity secret. We had to do that, and
you can't blame us for being reluctant to believe,
although we did publish your letter because it
was right in line with what we do believe, and
that is the Shaver Mystery. It is shocking, cer-
tainly, to have you tell us that your companion
was killed in that Alaskan adventure, but we can't
let it just rest there. Either this is true, or it isn't
true. And if true, you can't just let it go by being
sickened of the whole affair. We have chosen to
publish this letter, rather than replying directly
to you as yet, although by the time this is pub-
lished you will have heard from us. If your story
can be proved, and this cave shown to us, we CAN
and WILL raise money for a complete investi-
gation. Our readers, judging from the thousands
of letter we have, would find a way to finance
the thing themselves, if we didn't. They're that
interested. For example, Chet Geier, well known
author, has recently started a club of AMAZING
STORIES readers who are interested in doing some-
thing about solving the mystery. That ought to
prove to you that you would certainly not be
considered a crackpot if you came forward with
your complete story. Baring-Gould, true enough,
took it upon himself to cover a subject whereon
he was completely ignorant, and worse still, gross-
ly misinformed. He was like a Zulu given the job
of writing a technical article about an atomic pile
from information given him by a Hottentot. We
consider Mr. Gould's article to be simply a smart
article-writer's annexing of a fat check by getting
there fustest with the mostest words on a subject
he was clever enough to realize was "hot." He
writes for a living, and he'd do an article about
steel mills, if it was as hot. Although we hope
he'd go to a steel mill for his information, and
not a Hottentot.
So, let us go on record too. You send us your
story, and prove it, and we'll pay you a damsite
more than Gould got for his article. And if you
prove to have no more facts than Gould did, we'll
forget about it and no hard feelings. Sound okay
to you? --ED.

In the summer of 46 Amazing carried a story by a German author named Heinrich Hauser (HH could mean Heil Hitler) called Agarthi ("Hidden in caves under Germany there were great factories turning out monstrous V-7 atomic rockets to blast the whole world"). That summer there was also a last-page feature called King of the World based on Guenon (but hailing from Venus), and mention of Alexandre Saint Yves d'Alveydre, who made a report on Agartha in the 19th century that Guenon cites.

The story Agarthi is in the same issue as Crisman's first letter, June of 46.

"The absence of canopy, observation windows/blisters, or any optical projection, lends support to the opinion that this craft is either guided by remote viewing or is remotely controlled." [emphasis added]

Jan,

To my knowledge, the term "remote viewing" (as it appears in what purports to be a document written in 1947) had not been coined at the time of this usage.

Are we looking at prima facie evidence of a modern-day forger's screw-up?

Or was remote viewing as we understand it today being conducted over sixty years ago?

Hi Charles - I agree with Helen's interpretation below that "remote viewing" in the context of the alleged 1947 Twining memo implies viewing that is not direct such as through some mechanical instrument.

I know a lot about the various psychic remote viewing projects - CIA, NSA, Military Intelligence, Scientology - as I was the first UK journalist approached with the limited hangout story that became UK Channel 4's Psychic Spies documentary. Those projects are clearly of later origin, and if the memo did refer to this type of remote viewing, it would provide prima facie evidence of forgery.

However, I believe the phrase refers to non-direct viewing in an engineering not psychic sense.

At the bigger level, the purported 1947 Twining memo is not proven definitely authentic, and so needs to be treated with care. Again, I think Farrell's analysis - cited above - is careful and considered. If the memo is genuine then, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.....

In the summer of 46 Amazing carried a story by a German author named Heinrich Hauser (HH could mean Heil Hitler) called Agarthi ("Hidden in caves under Germany there were great factories turning out monstrous V-7 atomic rockets to blast the whole world"). That summer there was also a last-page feature called King of the World based on Guenon (but hailing from Venus), and mention of Alexandre Saint Yves d'Alveydre, who made a report on Agartha in the 19th century that Guenon cites.

The story Agarthi is in the same issue as Crisman's first letter, June of 46.

- deep black propaganda creating cover and plausible deniability for scientific research projects which are monstrous and potentially out of control.

Helen Reyes

08-27-2009, 12:44 PM

We have several worlds colliding here:

- A physics based more on Tesla than Einstein's relativity

- archetypal elements out of Jung

- SS Ahnenerbe mysticism

- deep black propaganda creating cover and plausible deniability for scientific research projects which are monstrous and potentially out of control.

And the industrial world of mining, the espionage world of finding cover for Nazi war criminals and the independent Federal Reserve's interface with the nominal government, the Treasury Department (which incidentally controls the Secret Service).

Kennedy was about to address the Dallas Trade Mart. I read Garrison's cross exam of whom I thought was Banister but must've been Shaw because it's all about World Trade Mart. Garrison tries to tie Trade marts and "World Trade Centers" together while questioning the suspect about his travel itinerary during the assassination. It quickly unravels that the suspect staged a speaking engagement in San Francisco, claiming he was invited to speak when he in fact set it up and rented the hall at the SF trade center org.

His real destination was a speaking engagement in Oregon, near Portland.

For some reason sources place Crisman in "Rainier, Oregon" during the assassination, teaching high school. To the best of my knowledge there is no Rainier in Oregon, and Crisman was teaching at Rainier High School in Tacoma that day. Still, Tacoma was just a short journey up the highway from Portland, and Garrison was probably working on a theory that the suspect was headed toward Crisman. Or maybe he was just fishing.

The boondocks link provided earlier contains info that Garrison, Banister AND SHAW were all in Washington state in 1947. Add Kerry Thornley's Confession, put E Howard Hunt and Crisman in New Orleans and Dallas during the period and you have a general outline of the plot. A core group organizing and numerous outside groups being drawn in for cover and plausible deniability.

That makes LBJ, General Dynamics and the Secret Service bit players, says nothing about the shooters' team or what and how they shot and leaves George H W "Pappy" Bush in Houston hanging like a question mark, but makes a certain kind of sense to me.

A core group organizing and numerous outside groups being drawn in for cover and plausible deniability.

That makes LBJ, General Dynamics and the Secret Service bit players, says nothing about the shooters' team or what and how they shot and leaves George H W "Pappy" Bush in Houston hanging like a question mark, but makes a certain kind of sense to me.

You are precisely on-target (pardon the expression).

Your "bit players" and "core group" constructions also may be written (with, if you'll permit me, added refinement) as "false sponsors" and "sponsors." See my earliest posts regarding a working tri-partite (with sub-divisions) model for the JFK assassination conspiracy structure -- an informed hypothesis originally developed by George Michael Evica and expanded upon by yours truly.

Magda Hassan

08-29-2009, 04:19 AM

http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/crisman_fbifile.pdf
Of the many and varied entries contained within the 1st Annual Report, point 6 of Annex C is certainly one of the most intriguing and refers to an incident that occurred at Maury Island, Puget Sound, Washington State in June 1947. According to a local resident, Harold Dahl, a UFO was seen to malfunction over the harbor and spewed a large amount of unidentified debris into the water. Dahl, his son and two colleagues collected the debris and showed it to Dahl’s boss, Fred Crisman. The story was passed on to Ray Palmer, a magazine publisher, who subsequently arranged for Kenneth Arnold (the pilot whose 24 June 1947 sighting was largely responsible for the coining of the term Flying Saucer) to interview Dahl and Crisman.
Following the publicity that the case attracted, two Army A-2 intelligence personnel from Hamilton Field (a Captain Davidson and a Lieutenant Brown) arrived at Maury Island on 31 July 1947. They interviewed Dahl and Crisman and flew back to Hamilton Field on the next day with some of the disc fragments on board. However, on the journey back, their aircraft caught fire, crashed and Davidson and Brown were killed. Supposedly, the disc fragments were never recovered. Speculation has existed ever since the events in question that the aircraft was sabotaged to prevent Davidson and Brown from reaching their destination. There is also much speculation surrounding Crisman, and rumors suggest that he was not an innocent party in the affair and was linked with the world of intelligence and may have been tied to the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Below is the relevant extract from the 1st Annual Report:
The death of two Air Force counterintelligence officers in the crash of their B-25 aircraft enroute to Hamilton AFB, California, after interviewing two auxiliary CG men who reported six UFOs over Maury Island, Washington, in June 1947. CIC agent Crisman had spoken to Kenneth Arnold, who on 26 June 1947, had reported a flight of UFOs over Mt. Rainier, Washington, and filed his report after he had spoken to Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown. The material given to Davidson and Brown was believed to come from Maury Island and may be celestial fragments containing metal from a nuclear reactor from a UFO. Fragments were turned over to CIA agent Shaw, and Crisman was ordered to the Alaskan ADC for assignment in Project IVY.
In our ongoing validation project, we are posting here the FBI’s officially released file on Fred Crisman and the Maury Island incident – all of which combined reveal a wealth of information on the events in question and on the life of Fred Crisman. More importantly, the data backs up that contained within the 1st Annual Report. The file is 40 pages in length and contains: (a) an August 1947 employment application that Crisman made for a position with the Atomic Energy Commission; (b) information on Crisman’s wartime work in the US military; (c) his post-war employment; (d) his relationship with Harold Dahl who was the prime witness to the UFO incident; (e) the recovery of the unidentified debris at Maury Island; (f) Kenneth Arnold’s involvement in the case; (g) the media coverage of the events in question; and (h) the involvement of Davidson and Brown and the mysterious crash of their aircraft that resulted in their deaths and the loss of the debris.

http://www.majesticdocuments.com/personnel/crisman.php
Thanks to Ed for the original pointer.

Helen Reyes

08-29-2009, 03:45 PM

You are precisely on-target (pardon the expression).

Your "bit players" and "core group" constructions also may be written (with, if you'll permit me, added refinement) as "false sponsors" and "sponsors." See my earliest posts regarding a working tri-partite (with sub-divisions) model for the JFK assassination conspiracy structure -- an informed hypothesis originally developed by George Michael Evica and expanded upon by yours truly.

Yes, false sponsors and sponsors (and mechanics. etc.) might be better terms. I read some of your earlier posts, having come to the same view independently, that the cabal was trans-East/West.

I believe the plot to kill Kennedy was planned from the very outset as a narrative plot by a small group of OSS veterans with literary pretensions, in the CIA fiction-is-stranger-than-truth/fiction-prefigures-reality school of thought. The task of carrying out the plot was conducted as research for a novel would be, but without much of a paper trail and through oral contact with a large number of false sponsors and theoreticians.

I notice you are from Providence Plantations. I believe the Phillips Institute at Andover Prep is named after a Providence family :) Unfortunate that it was taken over by the Marshes or Mabushes or whomever.

Charles Drago

08-29-2009, 06:05 PM

I believe the plot to kill Kennedy was planned from the very outset as a narrative plot by a small group of OSS veterans with literary pretensions, in the CIA fiction-is-stranger-than-truth/fiction-prefigures-reality school of thought. The task of carrying out the plot was conducted as research for a novel would be, but without much of a paper trail and through oral contact with a large number of false sponsors and theoreticians.

As you may have noted when reading earlier contributions to this blog, it was Professor Evica who first identified the JFK conspiracy and prior and subsequent operations as literary constructs -- replete with all the essential elements not just of drama, but also of the impressario's trade.

All the great religions' primary texts are, after all, novelistic in form and content.

Sol Hurok couldn't have sold the Lie and the Grand Lie as well as they've been marketed so far.

I notice you are from Providence Plantations. I believe the Phillips Institute at Andover Prep is named after a Providence family :) Unfortunate that it was taken over by the Marshes or Mabushes or whomever.

Or the Gogs and Magogs.

Helen Reyes

08-30-2009, 12:05 PM

As you may have noted when reading earlier contributions to this blog, it was Professor Evica who first identified the JFK conspiracy and prior and subsequent operations as literary constructs -- replete with all the essential elements not just of drama, but also of the impressario's trade.

I didn't get that far yet, but he's right. As for genre, pulp pot-boiler seems to fit the bill, with some psychological thriller elements. Viewing frame 315 of the Zapgun-pruder film, I'm inclined to say it's science fiction rather than a downhill motor race.

Or the Gogs and Magogs.

I see your wager and I'll Dubya.

Charles Drago

08-30-2009, 02:27 PM

Or the Gogs and Magogs.

I see your wager and I'll Dubya.

I've got a bedouin than that.

Seriously, while the JFK assassination drama may incorporate potboiler elements, it is in fact far more serious and accomplished than most genre fiction. (Are you aware that, when asked why he never examined the events of 11/22/63 in his fiction, John Le Carre noted that it would be "too difficult"?) Its mythic structures are worthy of Joseph Campbell, its characterizations are profoundly indebted to Shakespeare (Ruby as Falstaff? Angel and Leopoldo as Rozencrantz and Guildenstern? For starters?).

And of keenest interest to me are its uses of doppelganger elements -- characters and incidents, from two (at least) LHOs to multiple plots (Chicago, Miami, Dallas).

The literary pretensions of Messrs. Phillips, Hunt, and Shaw are well documented, as are the poetic inclinations of Jay Jay Angleton.

Dallas was a Passion play.

And still we come to that city to make the Stations of the Crossfire.

Helen Reyes

08-31-2009, 09:33 AM

Seriously, while the JFK assassination drama may incorporate potboiler elements, it is in fact far more serious and accomplished than most genre fiction. (Are you aware that, when asked why he never examined the events of 11/22/63 in his fiction, John Le Carre noted that it would be "too difficult"?) Its mythic structures are worthy of Joseph Campbell, its characterizations are profoundly indebted to Shakespeare (Ruby as Falstaff? Angel and Leopoldo as Rozencrantz and Guildenstern? For starters?).

And of keenest interest to me are its uses of doppelganger elements -- characters and incidents, from two (at least) LHOs to multiple plots (Chicago, Miami, Dallas).

The literary pretensions of Messrs. Phillips, Hunt, and Shaw are well documented, as are the poetic inclinations of Jay Jay Angleton.

Dallas was a Passion play.

And still we come to that city to make the Stations of the Crossfire.

You're right of course. It's more complicated than most pulps, but shares a certain kind of ambition. I'm not well versed in Shakespeare, or the Assassination Plot for that matter.

Was Angleton the counter-intel guy at CIA who turned out to be the Soviet mole himself? I can't keep them all straight. On a side note, Harriman was a US ambassador during WWII and cut a deal with Stalin for a Jewish homeland in the USSR, in Crimea. Wild Bill Donovan supposedly had good contacts in the NKVD (they probably considered him a foolish Amerian cowboy type) and after the third attempt on Patton wasn't a charm, supposedly had the NKVD send in a man to rub him out in his hospital bed. Funny how the OSS played it when they became CIA: they renounced Soviet friendship and claimed Roosevelt's administration left Truman with a bunch of Soviet spies in high offices.

Sort of reminds me of the old idea of a Communist under cover denouncing political opponents as Communists knowing full well they are not. It doesn't matter how they're denounced, as long as a Party man remains in factual control of the situation. Not that Communist has any meaning in real life.

Interesting that Bush was head of the CIA and became president at the same time Gorbachev, former KGB head, was secretary general, especially keeping mind Kennedy and Krushchev were removed from office within about a year of each other. Interesting as well that all the "revolutions" in Eastern Europe were top-down, on Gorby's command via telephone usually. Even those with the most versimilitude, Romania and Lithuania, were staged, in Romania by military leaders with a preexisting coup plan, in Lithuania by deep cover KGB posing as national leaders.

I know these topics are separate threads elsewhere on the forum, but Crisman seems as good a moment as any to tie them together a bit.

Helen, I've been absent for two months and have only just got back in circuation, so please forgive the delay in responding to your post. My comments in red below

The Deros story is very reminiscent of the Agartha myth and I very much suspect that is actually the true root of it. If that is the case then we are looking at the same general occult grouping that sits around Martinism or splinter groups thereof.

True, good call, but Crisman was doing something else here. Rene Guenon in Lord of the World (Le Roi du Monde, recently mistranslated/mistitled as King of the World) even supplies the Gypsy connexion: he calls them a people in tribulation who had formerly lived in Agartha. Shaver was more Agarthic, while Crisman was talking about the "mek": the lasers in Burma and those that he said caused the Army Air Corps craft to crash, killing the two airmen near Kelso, Washington.

This was in 1947 and earlier, before lasers were invented.

Crisman seems to have been a veteran of the OSS in China/Indochina. That puts him close company with E Howard Hunt and some other important CIA figures. Hunt also went in for writing thrillers and probably knew or even contributed to the Shaver cycle.

E Howard Hunt also, intriguingly, wrote three occult novels under the non de plume of David St. John. These were Diabolus, Sorcerers and Coven. They were not very well written nor did the reflect deep knowledge of the subject matter. But it remains more than interesting that he chose to write on the subject at all and I still wonder what truly motivated his foray into the occult world.

Bannister was somehow involved keeping Paperclip secret. Maury Island is a stone's skip away from old Boeing Field. Dahl went silent and then disappeared because he had a visitation from the first Man in Black the day after Maury who told him everything that happened in detail and warned Dahl to keep silent to save himself and his family.

Ray Palmer is anonymously credited in the internet document Secrets of the Mojave because he advocated for Navajo rights and support. Shaverism is grounded more in the native American cave tradition than in Traditionalism. Fortean Times has done some work documenting this native American tradition from the European American side. Art Bell's Mel's Hole series also belongs in it. If you read Palmer's editorials in Amazing after June, 1947, he begins to hint at a dangerous fifth column taking shape in America, foreign nationals wielding "dero mek". He's hinting at Paperclip Nazis with saucer technology.

Please elucidate on "dero mek". I can find no reference to it anywhere on the internet (Google returns this page only) and am unfamiliar with the term.

I think if you look into it, Garrison and Bannister were both working for the FBI in Washington state in 1947, and both had contact of some kind with Crisman.

Yup, seems more than likely.

Palmer was discredited by some over Maury Island because he "lost" the physical evidence. His special blowout Shaver issue of June, 1947, was plagued by all sorts of dirty tricks, printer devils, imps of the perverse, mysterious disappearances, gremlins, deroes or g-men, Palmer never specifies. truly wyrd stuff. the kind of manifestation john keel should be interested in.

From what little I have read about the Shaver mystery it is just another twist/retelling of the Nazi Agartthi/Shambala-cum-hollow Earth stories that became popular post WWII, and which have an occult root dating from far earlier times. I believe this is not dissimilar to the story of Atlantis, the sunken city and many of those who follow Agartha also favour Atlantean mythology. Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre was, of course, a long serving occultist who began the whole Synarchy concept and whose follower Papus, adapted his teachings to found Martinism -- one of, if not the principal occult orders that has a long term political agenda (most stay well clear of politics).

David Guyatt

09-07-2009, 12:31 PM

In the summer of 46 Amazing carried a story by a German author named Heinrich Hauser (HH could mean Heil Hitler) called Agarthi ("Hidden in caves under Germany there were great factories turning out monstrous V-7 atomic rockets to blast the whole world"). That summer there was also a last-page feature called King of the World based on Guenon (but hailing from Venus), and mention of Alexandre Saint Yves d'Alveydre, who made a report on Agartha in the 19th century that Guenon cites.

The story Agarthi is in the same issue as Crisman's first letter, June of 46.

See Wiki entry for Heinrich Hauser, (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hauser&ei=PPqkSsORJ9uhjAfc3uGFCw&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=2&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHeinrich%2BHauser%26hl%3Den%26client% 3Dsafari%26rls%3Den) a possible candidate for the cited article.

Heinrich Himmler was famous for signing his documents in green pencil with the initials "HH" per the below.

http://www.germaniainternational.com/images/docsigrfsshhimmler04.jpg

Linda Minor

09-08-2009, 02:47 PM

The FBI became involved in investigating Crisman originally because he applied for a job at a facility protected under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946--probably Boeing in Seattle. His application was made at some point prior to his decision to return to school in Oregon, as he reported to the FBI in August 1947.

http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/crisman_fbifile.pdf

Page 9 is interesting; it says Crisman was employed by Dahl, not the other way around. Dahl was rumored to be a black market operator during the war.

Ray Palmer was then working for Ziff-Davis Publishing, publisher of Fantasy and Venture.